Blood Feast
by Sixth Limb of Sephiroth
Summary: Vincent's got bad blood, it's all too true. When it gets worse, he starts turning heads. The wrong ones. -Old fanfiction is old.-
1. Fair of Deliverance

**Disclaimer:**** Honestly. Fanfiction... It's... it should be inherent fact that I own nothing but the particular premise, original characters and/or locations unless DULY noted otherwise. Yeah...**

_**Blood Feast**_

_**By: (formerly) CursedAngelofSephiroth  
**_

* * *

_**Chapter 1: Fair of Deliverance**_

With the Planet delivered from the raging shadow of Meteor and its summoner, peace was sure to return to the lands. Midgar was abandoned to the dark abyss of time ill-memorial, as the symbol of that which ailed the Planet, now ruined and emptied. In time, all minds would likely forget that dark wound on the face of the earth, forget what pain it brought, forget the evil it birthed within its bowels of metal and mortar, forget the black plague of death it allowed to spread, forget it all as verdancy would consume it in due time. The Planet would be its own once again.

The ragtag hero gang that did the grand deed of rescuing the Planet rejoiced in Kalm, the former watchtower on the front of Midgar's destruction and site where Meteor was dispersed through combined might of Holy and the Lifestream. Cloud and Tifa; Barret and Cid; Yuffie and Red XIII; and Vincent and Cait Sith, or Reeve, for the man behind the manikin. Triumphant in the purest sense, the crew called for revelry at the local inn, complete with singing and drinking and all else that would have made a celebration, a celebration.

"Hip hip hurray, y'all!"

The inn was packed from wall to wall with citizens of Kalm and re. Cid, Barret and Yuffie sang the night away, lifted drinks swaying overhead. Reeve, come out of hiding in the slums with the refugees of Midgar, chatted amiably with Cloud and Tifa near the counter, while his mechanical alter ego, provided a show for Marlene and the other children, complete with magic tricks and fortunes. Red XIII lounged in one of the corners of the room to avoid the shifting throng. As for Vincent, he stood outside under the moonlight of the white-blue sphere in the sky, drifting slightly eclipsed by Meteor's smoldering and ever darkling shell, not stargazing in particular. Just thinking.

_Well… The Planet has been saved, and Sephiroth, put to rest, like he should have been in the first place. Before, I couldn't do a thing, but now… I have proved myself at least a little worthy, a little less sinful. Perhaps with the Jenova still inside me, I can learn to cope with my pain and lead a life I might finally deserve. But… I have no idea what to do. And this bustling and sprawling world that I was once cast away from is too distracting to think properly. I need someplace quiet. Perhaps my coffin? It always had such privacy, the privacy I need now to plan my future. Sleeping between the ages isn't something I want to do anymore. But I can sleep once more, for a while, to sort out all my thoughts. Yes. Just a short while…_

Vincent glanced over his crimson clad shoulder at the inn where the singing and laughter continued on within its walls, where his companions were. He'd forgo saying goodbye, no matter even if he wanted to. He was going back to Nibelheim, back to his coffin in the basement of Shinra Manor. Hopefully to become a better person, if not that then think about becoming a better person.

There arose the sound of soft footfalls on the cobblestone street that the inn abutted. Vincent unhurriedly drew his eyes to the source.

It was a man, virtually a shadow in the dark of the night. Vincent's altered eyes spied the tall body clothed in black and red and gold, a curious, billowing robe with a trim waistcoat to complement it. He sensed something akin to majesty in the air surrounding the lofty figure, yet whatever it truly was would remain indistinguishable. As the man passed Vincent by, their eyes caught. He noticed that this creature possessed golden eyes, dimly lit by some unknown source within his own body, set into a round and ghostly pale face, which was framed by fine, light hair cut short to the neck.

The golden eyes cooled Vincent's blood by a whole degree as they had come and gone. Stricken as he was by such a response that his own body put out by the esoteric man, what came next threatened to baffle him off his feet. Following in the figure's light but hasty promenade was the alien smell of too sweet flowers. Vincent found almost himself literally drunk on such an aroma that he had to lean against the wall behind him to keep from reeling.

After collecting himself from the fragrant assault on his senses, he saw the man had vanished from the street, even the footfalls of his booted feet, as Vincent had deduced them to be from their sound on the shadowy blue cobblestone. Gone like a fleeting breeze.

"Who was that guy?" he whispered in pure wonder. Never had he felt the way he did right at that moment. In the presence of anyone. That was not an ordinary man, he mused. He shook his head to clear his mind of that unforgettable scent, focusing back on what he planned to do. Leave Kalm for Nibelheim and sleep on his future. He stole one last look at the inn and nodded. "Well. Take care of yourselves."

Vincent spirited away into the star-spangled blanket of night sky, moonglow and meteoric shadow, to reflect and shape a new path in life.

* * *

"Hey, where's Vincent?" Tifa asked, probing the room for their darkly dressed companion. "He should be in on this, too."

Cloud stared into his drink with unusual intensity. Only about half a minute later did he heed Tifa's questioning voice. "Huh? Vincent?"

"Yeah. Where is he?"

"Eh… Let him be. He doesn't have to be forced to have fun, Tifa," he answered with a slight shrug of his shoulders.

"Yeah, but… I thought he would've come out of his shell a bit by now."

"WHOOHOO! Turn up the music!" Yuffie cackled like a newly inducted witch, leapt upon a table and started to dance, making up lyrics to the song now playing on the jukebox someone had brought in. "We saved the Planet, yeah, we saved the Planet, ow! We beat Sephi's butt, yeah, he's had it, wow!"

"Has she been drinking?" Cloud asked, pointing at the ninja girl rocking the table side to side. Tifa hung her head down as though she herself was embarrassed for Yuffie's display.

"How can you even tell if she hasn't?"

"Right…"

* * *

_From Sixth: EDIT 20xx: Deleting this crappy piece of author's note. Remember folks, read old fanfiction at your own risk. I ain't gonna delete it because well, it's a reminder of the early days, though infused with stealth edits here and there from today... Also, this was from a time when one would have thought, pre-Dirge of Cerberus, that Vincent's state was a product of Jenova. So... whatever. Here to stay, biznatches._


	2. Netherworld Delicacy

_From Sixth: Ninja editing forever. And I wonder, will it read like two styles clashing? One and a half? I don't know...  
_

* * *

_Blood Feast_

_Chapter 2: Netherworld Delicacy_

Vincent entered slumber full of new purpose: not to lock and hide himself away, but to hone his mind in quiet for the future that lay ahead, as well as potential betterment in his choice. And his sleep went uninterrupted for weeks, even when he heard his companions visit his coffin in the mansion's depths to try and rouse him, to no avail. _Not yet, _he thought softly, _I won't wake until I know how to get on with this life. Until I'm sure. _And so he drew his mind deeper into reflective sleep, where all possible paths could run their course, with whom, where, when. The upsides, the downs. The demons still nestled beneath his skin and curled around his bones, in his blood and every fleshy fiber, each one their own entities but also a part of him. How their continued existence would work into the equation.

But one day, his sleep went briefly disturbed by the distant manifestation of some unknown force there, in Nibelheim, unknown but… familiar. His blood chilled in his veins for mere seconds before it flitted elsewhere. Vincent felt the need to investigate but he promised himself. Not yet.

There came another presence, nowhere as strong as the other but nevertheless detectable. It came nearer, creeping closer and closer, advancing upon Vincent steadily, unhurriedly, like a stalker of rats in the shadows. But he did not move. He assumed it was nothing more than a rat or bat, seeking shelter here below. That was, until…

Thump, thump on the lid of his coffin.

Thump, thump, thump.

Thump, thump, scratch.

Scratch.

Did something want entry into his coffin? Fortunately, he always had Death Penalty at his side should he ever feel in jeopardy. Breaking with annoyance and regret from his sleep, Vincent slunk his fingers to the gun holstered against his right hip. Any movements he made inside the coffin were thankfully cushioned from prying ears by the red velvet lining. No one had ever a coffin as extravagant as his after 'death.'

Something dared a soft creatural twitter. So it was confirmed that his interloper was nothing of human ilk, but beast or vermin, and a persistent one at that. If this annoyance continued, then he could not get in the thinking he so needed. So, with gun ready, Vincent started to push the lid up very cautiously, then, at last, drove it aside in one swift motion, allowing him to rise up in a black and red haze, Death Penalty drawn. Hovering close to the roof of the basement tomb like a dragonfly- the precursor to a snake's death- Vincent looked down upon the intruder that pestered him so.

It was nothing more than a vagrant Ying Yang, its faces the masks of passion and sorrow. The monster drunkenly waddled beneath him, raising its cumbersome limbs up at Vincent as though begging for an embrace, although he knew full well any embrace from this brute promised a sure death. He aimed first at the head of Ying, pulled the trigger, blasting the skull to gooey bits, as well as ruining one of its arms in the process. Yang and the remainder of the body staggered back, dopily groaning in pain and anger of its lost half, its blue face then darkening in primal rage. Yang stamped and leapt up as high as it could, swiping at Vincent drawn back down by gravity's pull. His foot caught in the monster's claws, sending him tumbling. Shaken, the gunman sprang back to his feet. The enraged beast swung its single arm continuously, only successfully disarming Vincent of Death Penalty. In its place, he whipped Quicksliver from its secret holster and unleashed a rapid salvo at the awkward Yang. However, it hardly slowed as its body bloated larger and larger.

"Damn it," Vincent uttered under his breath. He had forgotten that after a certain amount of time, a Ying or Yang would self-destruct when removed of either twin. He had to move and fast. He backed up towards the door. The unstable Yang hurled itself at Vincent, sending them both crashing through the wooden door. It had him pinned to the floor; any longer and he would be caught in the blast of the burgeoning monster.

"Need help?" a voice offered kindly, a voice that would have stopped him cold if not for the situation at hand. He glimpsed a pair of black booted feet placed evenly apart. His eyes traveled up the long legs well hidden by a lengthy scarlet robe decorated with seemingly random symbols. Letting his eyes go up further, Vincent saw, finally, the face of the newcomer.

It was that same man that he had seen in Kalm some while ago. Those eyes glowed faint.

Still struggling with the expanding Yang, he curiously gazed on at the strangely smiling man.

"Can I take that as a yes?" he queried.

"No."

"Please, allow me," said the man. The Yang froze. As though lifted by an invisible chain, the monster raised off of Vincent, who shot upright once free. The still, floating form of the distended beast did the man approach and jab with a couple of frail looking fingers. The Yang popped like a balloon pregnant with fetid oil.

Vincent brought up his cape against the flying monster juice, more than a little nonplussed as to how he managed to dispatch the thing, and offended that he would offer his hand where it wasn't quite welcome. He watched the man retreat from the spreading puddle of filth and gore, and then beam at him a bewilderingly warm smile.

"Are you alright? I was passing by when I sensed that something might be amiss. And, it seems that my instinct proved correct," he explained. Vincent was again attacked by that pungent, inebriating smell of flowers, very much the same smell that he had endured the first time they crossed paths on the streets of nighttime Kalm. He thumbed his nose at the scent; he wouldn't let it get the better of him. Rather he'd only regard it as something of note for later. Much later, if at all.

He sneered and wiped away the heavy chunks of flesh from his arm.

"Oh." The man chuckled mildly and bowed his head. "Let me introduce myself. My name is Yatsui. May I ask your name, sir?"

Vincent declined to answer with an accusatory glance.

"Ah, I see. It is alright, I will not force you. Well, then, I bid you farewell and should we ever meet again, you will tell me your name? Pardon me." Yatsui gracefully turned on his left heel to the ascending spiral path that led back to the mansion's upper floors.

"Wait," Vincent called after him. The man ceased his departure and twisted back in the other's direction. He sighed and took one step forward. "… Vincent."

"Hmm?"

"Vincent Valentine," he managed.

"Oh, Vincent Valentine. I am not worthy," confessed the golden-eyed man in a subtle bow. Vincent noted Yatsui's low, stirring voice, one far too gentle for any common man. The only people he had known so far to sport such gentle timbres, though excluding the eloquence, were Aerith, and Lucrecia. But even they didn't sound… as downtrodden, as beaten down to humility, not by a long shot.

A curious observation, he had to admit.

"If… you do not mind my inquiry, might I ask why you occupy the bowels of this abandoned house? It seems to me the only ideal for vermin and their monstrous lot. Are… you not human?" Yatsui ventured to ask. Vincent smirked and soundlessly scoffed. Who wouldn't ask a question like that, he thought. His humanity had always been questionable ever since that day. Perhaps even long before, reaching into his heydays of Turkdom. But he hardly felt the need to dignify that question with a response.

"What about you?" he retorted. "I've never seen a man with golden eyes."

"Ah, touché," the pale man said. He closed his eyes and seemed to inhale. "I suppose we should run?"

"What?" Vincent's senses raised alarms at the suggestion. Run? What for?

"Hear that? That squeaking, so small yet countless, soon to overwhelm us at any minute? It would not do to brave them here in so confined a space."

Vincent knew that the mansion harbored a mutant species of black bat, sometimes clouds of them which trickled down from the Nibel mountains when warmer seasons called for them. Yatsui could only have meant those, and that they were coming to where both men stood right now. He heard them. At first, they sounded like a chorus of whistlers struggling for the perfect pitch, succeeded then by the beating of wings. The squeaking grew more echoic as the swarm of flying rodents would soon befall Vincent and Yatsui.

A dark rabid cloud burst from the doors of the abandoned lab at the crypt's end. Vincent lifted his gun, jerked the slide and cocked the hammer, staring down the sight as he also took to the air. Yatsui, however, made no attempt to move despite him being the first to cry wolf. The infernal black bats evaded him, barely grazing his fine threads, their wings stirring little gusts to toss about his ashen pink hair. Puzzled by the swarm's ignorance of the man, he decided to plow through. Arms crossed over his face, he launched his body through the toothy, screeching cloud. They ripped by him, smacking heavily into the shield he made with his limbs and cape.

Just as Vincent passed over Yatsui's head, he heard him distinctly against the roils of deafening screeches and flaps, "They do not seem taken by my presence. You, on the other hand…"

He made a sharp ninety degree turn upward into the shaft, scaling the wall at his quickest speed possible in such a narrow space. He pushed off from the wall at the very top of the shaft, casually catapulting his body out of the hidden passage, knees and feet skimming the hardwood floor. The bats remained in hot pursuit, chasing Vincent in and out of the dead and empty halls of decadent ShinRa Manor. He looped around from another hall over the mezzanine and down to the first floor. He could feel the time of day, the warmth of the surface world, against his face, the sun's rays sure to break through every crack and portal in the atrium.

Vincent flew at the front doors, one foot thrust out to drive them open. He burst into the open air, beneath the calm rays of sun shining down on Nibelheim's quiet foothills. The bats floundered and dispersed in his wake, save but a few. He brandished his Quicksilver once more and picked off the bats one by one, sometimes twos or threes, a lucky four.

"Nuisances," Vincent uttered beneath his breath.

"Vincent Valentine." Yatsui stood at the old wrought iron gate ingress of the mansion, waving a hand to garner what he could of the other's attention.

"Busy," he called back, driving off the remnant vermin.

"I request intervention."

"No thanks."

"Let me prove my usefulness."

"You've done enough."

_Did he have some sort of hearing problem? _Yatsui, out of the corner of his eye, pointed his hand at the sky, making a gesture not unlike a gun. Using the other hand to keep it steady, he aimed at the bats circling above in confusion. Was he mocking Vincent? At a time like this? Yet what baffled him were the pinpoints of light shooting out of the man's finger as if they were bullets. For the few he managed to take down, they sparked, crackled and fell in a convulsive puff of smoke and sometimes flame.

With the remnant bats dead, dying or in full retreat, Vincent relaxed. He took a moment to replace the magazine in his gun before returning it to his hidden holster.

"Huh."

The other man approached him steadily. Vincent fired a hard, narrow glare, which was returned with forever a sad smile on a radiant face. The gunman raised a halting hand.

"Who and what are you?"


	3. Intermission

**_Blood Feast_**

**_Chapter 3: Intermission_**

Yatsui, with all his unwarranted friendliness, invited Vincent to sit down with him in his room at the inn. Though still holding true to his shaky suspicions about the man, he took up the invitation and trailed him through town for ulterior reasons of finding out Yatsui's true nature, as well as whatever other agendas he might be hiding.

"This town is very quaint and the scenery is quite beautiful. Yet sad," said Yatsui as he climbed the stairs to the second floor of the establishment. Vincent warily followed suit, silent and contemplative on the character of the man that came to his aid—unwanted, uncalled for, unneeded as it was. Why was he even here in Nibelheim to begin with? Nibelheim, of all places? _If he came here specifically to save me from monsters, _he mused with a scowl,_ then blessed I be by the goddess of good fortune. Or cursed by tricksters plotting a dark comedy in my future, whom I'd sooner put a bullet through._

Vincent scoffed at himself for failing to understand, or rather glossing over something he'd yet to uncover.

"Oh, I had nearly forgotten. Something for you, Vincent Valentine," said the man. Upon entry into the inn's spacious upper floor suite, Yatsui walked over to the bed nearest the doorway, its bedclothes crisp, clean, and made, where on it laid none other than…

Death Penalty.

Vincent's eyes went wide in mild stupefaction that he would find his cherished weapon here, after being disarmed of it earlier. As if coaxed by some cooing spirit, he stalked towards the bed, scooped it up and gave it a once over. The barrels were still loaded, but the safety, on.

"My gun. How did it get here?"

"It seemed to me like it could have meant a great deal to you. So I took it upon myself to bring your weapon back from that basement, to reunite you," Yatsui explained, strolling over to the window, drawing the curtains far apart to wash the room in thin, mellow sunbeams.

"You…" Vincent rotated to where the unusual creature stood poised and thoughtful by the window.

"Hm? Are you not pleased?"

"I can be nothing but pleased," he voiced sedately. "But when? I was behind you the entire ti-"

"Pardon?" Yatsui cocked his head sideways in curiosity, just as a child would, but his blank expression was nowhere near childlike. It was a mask for something beyond any human comprehension. Because of those eyes, that they were as glass when everything else about his face was opaque instead, like the finest salt.

"Why don't you have a seat, right over there?" Vincent suggested, stabbing a thumb at the lone table in the room's center. "I have questions. They need answers. Let's start with: What are you doing here? How did you know where to find me, _why _did you think I needed help and how did you pull your little trick with"– he pointed Death Penalty at Yatsui's feet— "grabbing my gun when I wasn't looking? Huh?"

"Please, please, so many questions," Yatsui chuckled jovially. "Like a child you are, betraying your dark and mature exterior."

"Look, you can answer my questions or you can-"

"You expect me to answer when I know nothing of you in turn?" Yatsui tapped his chin in mock deliberation, his eyes flashing with something somewhat cryptic, sly. "I propose a friendly trade of information. Tell me about yourself and I might reveal something of mine. I enjoy making acquaintances of the people that I meet."

The gunman colored himself unimpressed; if anything, this man's politeness was a mite offensive. Condescending. He struggled not to visibly bristle with annoyance.

"Mm, aha. Tell me, if you will. What is the reason for that claw? I admit it has captured my eye for quite some time now."

Vincent glanced down at his left arm, which had long been encased inside this manmade contraption of alloy, rivets and bolts, and who knew what else. The symbol of his bloodstained past and sins, his dark second nature, the monsters lying beneath his skin. Why get to know this? It was a humiliating, sobering piece of his tragic history, one he hoped to bury at last someday, somehow. It wasn't ammo for shooting the breeze with perfect strangers.

"Your eyes," Yatsui said. His voice sounded so close, that was until Vincent realized that he was standing right before him. That fragrant scent that the man exuded invaded his senses, curled about his thoughts like snakes unseen, settled a veiled feeling of something he didn't like but couldn't identify upon him. He inched away from Yatsui to escape that damned aroma and the befuddlement it enforced.

"What about?" he asked, turning a cold shoulder.

"Sir, you bear a heavy weight on that shoulder, no? On both of them. Hm. And the rare crimson hue in your eyes. That is not typical of man. They are weary, bleak, guilty. Is that not right?"

Vincent frowned. "I didn't ask you."

"But you did. And yet, my sincerest apologies if I make you uncomfortable, if I am broaching too deeply." Yatsui bent slowly at the waist.

"Excuse me when I say I don't believe you," Vincent rebuked with a deceptively kind nod at the top of the man's head. "I don't take kindly to assumptions. Whatever guilt you think I harbor, or weariness or anything of that sort, you don't know the half of it. Not even a hint."

"Spare me a hint? There is poetry here. I can see it; it is a symbol. In fact, you are practically a string of them.

"May I share something with you? I have a symbol, as well, Vincent Valentine, but I do not know if it can be likened to yours. It has been with me for as long as I can remember, but…" The pale man clenched a fist and held it to his chest, thumb nestled against his sternum, his stance mimicking some warrior saint in prayer, a bizarre gesture but not entirely unexpected coming from him. "It is very personal."

Vincent deigned to silence.

Yatsui fell into a long, unnerving pause, a pause that cleft the air for what felt like an eternity and beyond, sucking any and all sound into the small vacuum. Finally, the man sighed, breaking the hush he had let settle.

"Well, do pardon me for that, Vincent Valentine-"

"Unnecessary," Vincent remarked.

"Yes… But please, please, tell me now about the past behind your claw, your symbol of many. I promise rapture in listening to your explanation, yes?" Yatsui nodded, hopeful.

"That's classified information. Sorry if that's not what you want to hear," Vincent told him with a dismissive wave of his golden claw.

"What a shame." Yatsui held an elbow in one hand and tapped his temple with two fingers of the other. "It cannot be helped, can it? Ah but there are, after all, more important things, are there not?"

"Yes, there are."

* * *

_From Sixth circa 2003:_ This seemed like what they call a filler chapter. I dunno… Oh, and, dear Sarene, I do give credit where it is due. I know Vincent's plenty strong. Maybe I was just trying to show what Yatsui what can do or something or other. Yeah, that's it; I was making leeway for Yatsui's strength. Don't worry, Vincent'll definitely sound stronger in chapters to come. Because, there's always his transformations and putting in materia for him to use and whatnot and blah blah blah. I still have a ways to go with this story. _To be continued…_


	4. Deed for a Deed

_Blood Feast_

_Chapter 4: Deed for a Deed_

"I still want answers," Vincent insisted, idly wagging his gun at the other's feet. "I want to know _what_ you are before I hear anything else."

Yatsui inhaled from the pit of his stomach then drifted off into a deathly stillness, where one could have mistaken him for a man suddenly turned to stone. But the flicker of his eyes betrayed that absolute calm. The light within them swirled and churned like the eyes of storms, the pupils then deadening and suddenly dark for but a moment. They were perfect, boundless, lifeless pitch. Black holes. Something unknown, and unknowable. Vincent felt himself slip from simple skepticism to disbelief, blinked once, and the man's eyes were lit up once more, humble to the point of sleepiness. "You do not want to know."

"And why's that?"

"It is not something I am proud of, my origins."

"Then we have a little something in common. Remember, you started this."

Yatsui grimaced thoughtfully, at last straying from his stillness, going back to stand at the window and pressing his fingertips into the sill, his head dropped low with his chin to his chest. "I suppose so. Would that mean we are kindred in this life, you and me? Do we share that sort of past, one dominated by shadows as far and tall as the eye can see? So imposing that they would choke the life out of us both were we to let down our guard?"

"If you insist on lumping us together the way you've been doing, sure."

He hushed himself for a time. Then, as he clasped his salt-white hands at the small of his back, Yatsui muttered, "Are we at an impasse?"

"Up to you."

"Well, then."

"Well, then."

Yatsui huffed and turned to face Vincent who stood waiting, Death Penalty still trained on his feet. A minute seemed to pass before he heaved then slouched at the shoulders. "How to put this simply? I am but a man. A traveler, or might vagrant be a word more fitting?"

"You have an agenda: What is it?"

"An agenda?"

"You can't have done what you did for nothing. Confess."

"I am on a pilgrimage, that is all," said Yatsui, his head bowed. "A journey of the soul, _for_ the soul. Is that so wrong, sir? I am searching to recover that which I have lost; I meditate on it, and I observe, and I may lend a hand to those when and if necessary along the way to the eventual end of that road I travel."

"There's something you're not telling me. You don't look the spiritual type. Not with those clothes."

"My apologies if my appearance deceives you. But I am nothing if not what you call 'spiritual.'" Yatsui tipped his head up towards the ceiling, eyes shut. Beyond his eerie gloom-laden frame, Vincent noticed a beat of motion just outside the window. Like the beating of a little bird's wings. But whatever hovered there was nothing of the sort. The silhouette it cast was much too large for the common mountain larks, much too top-heavy. Too comical. Vincent laid Death Penalty to rest in the crook of his arm, and removed from his holster with two clawed fingers small orbs, one blue and the other purple. Materia. He slipped them into the long, decorative grip of his gun, pressing in until he heard a tiny click indicating that they were secured in their slots.

He sighed.

"Am I that suspicious?" Yatsui mouthed to the air.

The drifting figure rose into view above the other man's shoulder. Another monster, and yet another inhabitant straight from the bowels of ShinRa mansion. The pumpkin headed nightmare.

Yatsui appeared so self-absorbed that he hadn't heeded a thing, not like he did with the coming of the bats, but Vincent eyed the creature like a hawk with its clownish grin, scarlet crescents to scarlet eyes.

The gunman aimed quietly at the monster.

"You have not spoken, sir. So, still you wait for some great reveal? Hmm, you may wait an eternity." The man continued to speak, his obliviousness as a child's, so concerned with itself that the world could have gone to hell in a hand basket before seeing the flames rise.

"You're not even trying."

Vincent pulled the trigger, watching the white hot sparks spit from the muzzle of his gun, his ear long since pleasantly deaf to the lightning crack of the bullets expelled. The shot darted over Yatsui's shoulder, whipped his hair out in its wake, towards its target in the window, that silent Dorky Face. The bobbing creature screeched with the shatter of glass and dropped out of sight.

"What?" Yatsui slapped a hand at his cheek, nonplussed at what had occurred and the speed in which it'd moved from present to past. "What was that?"

"A monster. One you _didn't_ hear this time."

"Oh… How careless of me. So wrapped up within myself, of course I failed to notice."

"Hmph." Vincent sheathed Death Penalty with the utmost care in its holster and adjusted his crimson cape over its length. "Since you seem to be dancing around the issue and daydream of what I couldn't care less, I think it's time I take my leave. I didn't want to be bothered, especially by things as annoying as monsters and men like you."

"Might it have something to do with how you smell?"

"Excuse me?" Vincent said, shortly after turning halfway for the exit. The muscle in his jaw clenched slightly; he was taking more offense to this baseless observation than he thought he should. Just what did that have to do with anything? And how could the man even smell him over his own ever-present body odor? How did he come to that conclusion? "Explain yourself."

"Please excuse me for saying this, but your body emits something which surely must be rot."

* * *

_To Sixth: Yeah. Old note. How old was I back then? I wish the strikeout code was available. So that it's still there but not as prominent as it used to be._

_From Sixth: That seemed kind of mean for Yatsui to say that, huh? But there's a reason, a reason that will soon be revealed. Vincent doesn't stink like you think. There's a certain smell raising hell. And I won't tell you 'til next chapter debut. Okay, that last one sounded a bit wrong. Oh well… Oh, and Narukye, I would be happy to give you some good writing tips. It might be a little hard for me to get the words straight, since sometimes I'm so addlebrained, but it's no real problem. Expect them soon_.


	5. The Olfactometer

_Blood Feast_

_Chapter 5: The Olfactometer_

* * *

He'd reflected on Yatsui's unusual remark— and stolen moments in private to sniff at his hair, his cape, at his sleeves and gloves for anything out of the ordinary— about a stench that he himself couldn't smell. Every whiff failed to bring anything to light. Still bothered, Vincent decided it was time for an opinion from another denomination of being.

He settled on a visit to Cosmo Canyon, questing for Nanaki's expert nose. He rode the entire stretch from Nibelheim to the canyon on a motorbike begrudgingly on loan from Yuffie, braving and besting the assaults of resident griffins and solitary golems, all of who weren't normally so aggressive unprovoked, without the aid of the cryptic man who'd somehow came to the conclusion that the gunman needed company. It couldn't have been further from the truth. When he parted, the other said nothing as Vincent made for his journey to seek out this old companion of his, being that he was conveniently close compared to everyone else, even Cid who'd left Rocket Town behind. But he knew that that wasn't the end of Yatsui, but as to why he thought that, he couldn't have said. It was just a strong feeling pitted in the depths of his gut.

Cosmo Canyon was still a calm land, basking under the semi-eternal dusk that the red earth produced from centuries of sun beating down upon that iron-rich corner of the Planet. The wind raced throughout the depths, skimmed its walls, carried always the scent of ancient soil and ever flowing life in its earthen cradle. Vincent could have seen himself living here to some degree, as a pilgrim, a mountain man, watching and living off the canyon as its dusky tide rose and fell, man and animal lived and died, forever entwined in that tragic, yet mystical cycle of existence. For the immeasurably long life that Jenova's cells cursed and coursed through his veins, but blessed him still in a few matters of life or death, he could witness nature mold every facet, evolve every detail to its whimsy.

To think, on his drive over, a peaceful hermitage here was looking pretty good as a viable future.

For now, Vincent had a stench to prove wrong.

He had to meet Nanaki.

And Vincent made his destination, the cliffside burrows of Cosmo Canyon, home to the guardians of the Valley of the Falling Star.

"Vincent? Vincent, bring yo' gloomy ass ova here! Whatcha doin' here?" shouted a great booming voice, one he knew all too well and occasionally lamented.

The hulking black man pounded toward him from the ever blazing hearth of Cosmo Candle, followed by the tiny fair-skinned figure of his daughter Marlene. Much to Vincent's surprise, even Tifa dared an appearance. "Last we saw you was in dat coffin of yours, sealed up like a goddamn clam."

"Vincent, it's good to see you up and about. I was afraid you were going to lock yourself up again for gods know how long," Tifa told him with something of a sigh of relief. Vincent shook his head, though that little action went unnoticed.

"Why are you all here?" he asked eventually. Barret smacked him on the back, urging him to come join them by the vibrant guardian bonfire.

"I'm showin' Marlene some of m' roots here in Cosmo," he said, sweeping his meaty paw across the canyon's vista.

"I'm watching after Marlene watching after her dad," Tifa smirked.

"Shii… Shucks."

"Oh. Cloud?"

"He…" The brunette drew her arms behind her back and rocked on the balls of her heels a couple of times, so plainly expressing her hesitance to answer that was a little less than embarrassing. Then, she went on with, "He's away right now so I have a lot of free time, excluding dedication to opening my new bar in Nibelheim."

Ever since the days following Meteorfall, Cloud had been a little quieter than usual. No, he was like that beforehand. Aerith's death left him sober, disillusioned, although he was happy to put on a show of content for the rest of the party when necessary. But the questions lingered always like low hanging clouds. Why did she have to die? Why did she… The gunman had to interrupt his own thoughts for his mind had strayed once and that was already one too many.

"So, Vincent, what about you? What're you doing here?" Tifa queried.

"I'm looking for Nanaki. Is he here?"

"That damn furball's all playin' hotshot chief up in the observatory," Barret inserted.

"Daddy, I'm hungry," Marlene blurted out, tugging on his arm.

"Alright. C'mon, baby. See ya later, Tif, Vincent." Barret nodded to them both, picked up the little girl and settled her on his shoulder as they started off towards the inn.

"Want me to take you to Red? It's not a bother," Tifa said with a smile. Vincent nodded and gestured for her to lead the way. Together, they strolled up the steps to the burrows carved into the canyon face. As they passed by the Tigerlily Arms shop, a voice beckoned out to them.

"Vincent Valentine, why, what a pleasant surprise it is to see you here."

Tifa and Vincent forced themselves to halt in their tracks. Tifa stood puzzled, to which the man faced in her direction and grinned. "Hello. My name is Yatsui. Your name, madam?"

"Um… Tifa, Tifa Lockhart. Nice to meet you." Yatsui bowed to her with all the decorum of one of those nobles of a forgotten age. Vincent glanced over at his companion; her smooth, round cheeks had flushed slightly in response. She bent back near Vincent and whispered out of the side of her mouth, "Is this a friend of yours?"

"Should he be?" he retorted half mindlessly. All he could really wonder was how did the man get here to Cosmo Canyon? Unless he knew how to fly, or whatever Vincent was capable of doing for short instances—or some sort of teleportation? — just how could this man get here before he did?

"So… Am I imposing on what might soon be a private moment?"

"Oh, we're just going to meet a friend of ours," Tifa replied, blushing now more than before. The woman cocked her head to the side, asked, a little to Vincent's wonder, "Erm, care to join us? Since you're a friend of Vincent's, I mean…"

It took Vincent all of his restraint not to slap his own face.

"Why thank you. You do not mind, do you, Vincent?" Yatsui beamed that beguiling grin that the other man had come to know and recall so easily in so small an amount of time. It tired Vincent in some way to have that radiant face, a man's face, burned into his memory the way it was. His genteel nature, that melancholy underlying his every movement, the unwanted empathy he threw around like everyone was in need, that miserable flowery scent. How would he ever be able to forget this man? Did he even want to? _Stop wondering about him so much. You have other things to worry about. This is ridiculous, either way._

The trio ambled up to Bugenhagen's observatory at the pinnacle of the cliff face the burrows were carved into. Yatsui made a fleeting sound of admiration to the vision he saw expanding out and beyond.

"Tifa," a low voice rumbled from the observatory's threshold. The three turned toward the small, homey structure.

"Red," she returned, nearly skipping to the beast with the fiery red mane. Tifa bent down on her long legs and patted his head and Nanaki welcomed it with a pleasant grumble. His ochre eye practically wafted in Vincent's direction.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, Vincent. I am glad to see you. I was worried that you'd sleep it all away again."

The beast glimpsed Yatsui last as the man roamed about the room like a child in a candy store, who had then diverted his attention from his current fascination to the one spying his way. One strange creature to another. "Ah, and who are you?"

"Oh, pardon me. I am Yatsui. And you are… the color red?"

"Nanaki, but you can call me that, too."

"What a wonderful being you are. I sense youth and age in harmony within you, and you are definitely attuned to the rhythm of this earth, are you not?" he questioned. Nanaki rose up on his haunches and stared at the tall, thin man.

"You-"

Vincent jumped in. "I have a minor favor to ask."

"Hum?" Nanaki fell quiet. His nose twitched abruptly as if bothered by biting insects when there were, in fact, none. He looked up and down Vincent's black and red clothed frame. The creature's dark nose wrinkled. "Vincent, where have you been to smell like that?"

"What? You actually smell me?"

"Yes, it's faint, but pungent. Like something is dying, like you're dying and decomposing, and beginning to stink. But you're not dying, are you, Vincent?" Nanaki asked, alarm suddenly in his voice. Vincent's eyes fluttered over the floor. What was he saying? He would know if he were dying. That was impossible, unless… He fell into a terrible mode of brooding. _Maybe it has something to do with the Jenova cells in my blood?_ _Maybe they're the reason I smell like this? That is, if he's telling the truth. What else could it be? Maybe it could be that now that Jenova's truly dead and… No, no. That can't be right._

_I don't know what to think._

"Vincent?" Tifa sounded. "What's Red talking about? You don't smell like you're dying. You don't even look like it. I don't see or smell a thing."

"Hmm… Hey, Vincent-"

"Wait," Yatsui said sharply. Everyone stopped and pinned all eyes on him. He slinked to the door like some otherworldly cat and poked his head outside. "Something is happening down below."

"There is? How so?" Nanaki padded next to the man and peered out in much the same fashion. His ears went flat and stiff. "You're right… But what?"

Yatsui bolted from the observatory and leapt over the edge of the cliff. Tifa yelped in surprise at the man's sudden course of action. Vincent bounded over Nanaki and spied the area below. Yatsui, himself, had plunged all the way down to where Cosmo Candle burned.

Towering, slinking spiderlike things stalked about, herding the defenseless natives in circles like headless birds, with few places to flee other than into the burrows, which the monsters inconveniently obstructed with their needle-sharp legs. Screams and clicks clashed like tides beating into one another. It was chaos.

Vincent took after Yatsui, speeding towards the ground where he was already helping people to safety.

"Hey!"

"Vincent, come to lend a helping hand?"

Once the gunman was on his feet, the spiders halted then switched about as if to converge on him and only him, in a slow but fluid sway. He loaded new materia into his gun and aimed at the closest four-legged thing within his sights. He pulled the trigger, firing a salvo charged with ice at its tiny main body. The overgrown spider shrieked bloody murder, weighed down by the cold solidifying over it, where its then frozen weight came crashing down and shattering to pieces, leaving the legs standing like stakes wobbling in the wind. Another of the creatures slipped up behind him, one razor edged limb lifted to strike. The spider thrust its leg out, which Vincent dodged easily, shooting into the air above and firing a shot propelled by the force of a tornado; it tore through the spider's body, flinging pieces up and down. Yet two other spiders ambushed him, driving their front limbs in rapid succession. Vincent somersaulted in midair as one of the needle legs ripped into his crimson cape.

"Watch out!" A chunk of earth flew past Vincent, sailed over his head, and smashed into a spider that soundlessly bore down on him from far in the rear. Yatsui hurled yet another chunk at the other monsters but they fast learned to evade them.

"The fuck? Stingers!" shouted Barret. He pointed his prosthetic gun arm at a Stinger and released volley after volley at the prancing beast. Punched through to the point of perforated cheese, it collapsed in on itself in a steaming pile of pulp, legs twitching into stillness. Another Stinger had sprung up high at Barret. He wheeled round and unleashed another ruthless barrage, which had somehow managed to graze its intended target. The spider monster landed just over him, hissing and snapping with steaming mandibles.

"Pardon!" Yatsui launched himself at the Stinger with electrified hands, tearing the monster off its stilts.

"Damn, man! The hell you do?" Barret exclaimed.

"I hope that to be the last of them," Yatsui huffed.

"But not for me," Vincent uttered lowly, looming over a fallen carcass. "They appeared here because of me. When they saw me, they all turned. I have to find out why. What makes them turn…? What makes me look like a feast?" He lifted his claw to meet his eyes, the leather-bound palm supine, making an effort to flex the fingers outward. Was it the culprit?


	6. The Devil's Flight

_**Blood Feast**_

_**Chapter 6: The Devil's Flight**_

* * *

Vincent practically paced a hole in the floor of Bugenhagen's sanctuary while Yatsui and his friends surveyed him in general silence, apart from Barret's noises of vocal restraint, snorts and coughs and the occasional whisper to Marlene—yet the little girl had always been the sensible one when she needed to be.

He'd gone over events in his head so far. It started with the Ying-Yang, soon followed by the bats. That solitary Dorky Face. The flustered griffins on the way here to Cosmo Canyon. The Stingers, crept up from where they were usually quite content to remain stalking the cool, dank iron-rich caves meandering below them. Long before that, the gunman existed mostly undisturbed. Or had he not noticed because there was a world that needed saving and enemies lurked around every corner like life was going out of style? Was he a monster beacon all along?

Vincent glanced over at Yatsui, who stood straight against a far wall, half-open eyes peering back lifelessly.

_Or is it him?_

He was a stranger that preceded these strange events. Was he a monster, too? Was he the one that started whatever was happening, on that evening who knew how many weeks and months ago, following Meteorfall?

Monsters existed everywhere, the damned beasts. They came in all sizes, shapes and forms, even human, whether natural or unnatural. Races, religions, and creeds among them were another story that few dared to broach. That aside, Vincent had never really considered monsterkind before. In the beginning, in his beginning, they were simply nuisances to be dealt with when they carried children off, razed crops down to the roots, overran human civilization, gummed up the works in Shinra's plans. They still were. But what need did the Planet have to create this kingdom of beasts to coexist with mankind? They were more than simple animals. Scientists, of course, pointed to evolution. If given to legends and myths, others considered Jenova the mother of all monsters when she fell eons ago, twisting whatever she touched into something unrecognizable.

The Calamity from the Skies. A monster in every sense of the word. Ruled by blood, governed by greed, bound by warped ambition—all of these the sinews for the body of some basic alien instinct far beyond their understanding. She was a mother of monsters, stepmother to his sin.

So, then, was it her, the be-all end-all culprit? Was it Jenova that masterminded this? Was his body and blood finally rebelling against him, seeking his torment, his death? Or some other ploy that the cells had in mind for the gunman? All these possibilities were enough to send him reeling off the cliffside. He wasn't fond of the idea of monsters trying to make a meal out of him. Or worse.

"What to do…" Vincent grumbled.

"Vincent Valentine, there must be something that can rectify your problem," Yatsui said with genuine concern, almost too genuine. Then he murmured to himself, "If not, then…"

"It must be the Jenova cells. Now that she, their source, is long gone and dead, maybe they're spoiling? There's nothing to call out and sing to them, like the Reunion would have done. But I still feel these demons. Were they something… else entirely, then? Of course. Hojo was trying to one up Gast. Of course."

"But shit, man, what them monsters come for?" Barret asked, clueless.

"Well, from much of what Vincent's said, it has to be him," Nanaki explained. He chuffed then added, "I mean that smell _is_ rather…"

"There may be…" Vincent started to speak but stopped and pondered the rest in quiet.

"What are you thinking?" Yatsui asked. Vincent shook his head slowly then made a move for the door.

"I need to be alone. Gather my thoughts."

"Wait a second. Can't we do anything… to…?" Nothing but the tail of his cape caught Tifa's words when he left. She'd been the only one to rise to her feet in light of the gunman's departure. And she was tempted to rush after him. But everyone knew how much Vincent liked his personal space. Even after all that time they'd spent traveling together in the past, he was still wary about letting others close. Or it was merely a knee-jerk reaction that he had yet to grow out of.

At least he had a reason this time, whatever it was.

* * *

Vincent returned to Nibelheim to prepare himself. With every little errand to gather essentials, he couldn't help but glare over his shoulder like a hawk. He expected Yatsui to pop up out of nowhere the way he'd been doing, as if his company were welcome. It wasn't. It never was. The strange man was getting to be a pain in the ass.

Thankfully, he never showed his pale face once. This time.

But the evening before his departure, the skies would attempt to cloud over with those mutant bats again, the dogged pests. Vincent would spend a couple of hours cloaked in repellent materia on the roof of the inn, picking them off in little bunches when they dared swoop down a little closer. So, despite the 'rotting smell' that plagued him, monsters just couldn't fight the power of materia. They'd failed to get a good trace of him, so the gunman exercised his free rein to put them down in their confusion, all without breaking a sweat.

It was a good night. The wings and fangs from the corpses fetched a fair bit of gil at some of the shops, which Vincent then pooled into his personal funding.

All the while he wondered. There was no one left in this world to really figure out his current condition. Those who'd been intimate with his body in ways he wanted to forget were long since gone. In some ways he was grateful, in others he didn't know what to think or feel. _But there should always be records, right? But first…_

He had an obligation to fulfill. His journey.

To the City of the Ancients. The Forgotten Capital.

Like Cloud, Vincent came here seeking something, or some things. The solitude, the thoughtful decadence, last but not least the memories, to name a few.

The city was a shelled memorial to days bygone, more spiritual, austere and pure; of a people beloved by the Planet before Jenova wrought her disease upon them. Those people might have died off, but the city remained untouched by the Calamity from the Skies. Houses of bleached shell and stone petrified by time, the lonely ghost of a doomed utopia, that was this city. The winds of Coral Valley moaned on and on, forever lamenting its loss of the Cetra.

Of Aerith.

Vincent hefted his bag over one shoulder, double checked the small pouch thumping against his hip bone with each breeze or movement. He sighed, surveying the fossil metropolis ahead of him. "So quiet, so empty," he'd muttered. The wailing, whistling gales tossed his hair from side to side, stray locks throwing webs across his face. The air was cold and salty-sweet, gritty, too, from its careful and perpetual grinding down of the city. But there was nothing here, no one but him. Perfect.

He heaved his shoulders, beginning his hike down through to the city's inner limits, where the real wonders—and memories— lay. Though he had no clue how to use it, Vincent liked sitting by the Holy Machine, marveling at its design, mulling over the device's manipulation by the late bobbing Bugenhagen to spill out eerie music and images. Aerith's last moments. But he was sure it was capable of more than that.

"Hm."

"Why did you come here, of all places?"

Vincent groaned aloud, suddenly all too tired.

"Yatsui." He spun around to find the man just standing there with the wind looking as if it would blow him over and away. How the gunman could only hope. "Why do you follow me everywhere? I don't need someone like you constantly looking over my shoulder. So just what is the point?"

Yatsui took one step forward.

"I don't need a guardian. Hey, thanks for whatever you've done so far, but now? I can solve this alone, so if you'd kindly make your exit…"

"I cannot leave you, not just yet… You may not feel it so plainly now, but your pain I see so clear that it permeates the air, mystifying me. All this pain, you were not meant to have. Haunted by these shades of a dreary past, you were not fated to be." Yatsui advanced upon Vincent until they were nearly face to face, distanced only by Vincent's claws pointed in warning. "For so long I have observed you since the first day I laid eyes upon you. Your ache, I feel it as though my own but it is not… I cannot bear to see you this way. I cannot bear to see anyone this way. So, Vincent Valentine… Give me your pain."

"What?" Vincent's trigger finger twitched towards the gun at his hip. The monster finally reared its head, something the likes of which he didn't expect coming from this man, or any man. This was his game. Some lunatic scoping the crowds for what he assumed were those precious troubled few. And when he got them alone, unguarded, he struck in the guise of a sad faced man offering absolution.

Vincent wasn't defenseless. Instead of drawing Death Penalty on Yatsui, he bent quickly for his Quicksilver. Not as imposing as the rifle, but it remained a sure sign of caution.

"I am saying… lay your pain onto me. Let me bear it for you, for I see in your eyes how much you desire your life to be yours again, without hindrance. Give me your pain… Vincent." Yatsui outstretched his arms as if to bring the other into a loving embrace. Vincent recoiled accordingly. His shift in behavior, in words, it unnerved him. All this talk of taking his pain sounded absurd. It begged consideration, though. Some tiny part of himself was tempted. If he could stop the monsters, _all_ the monsters, what a burden he'd lift. And, who knew what else he was capable of, if he truly was capable? Just like that. Tempting, mildly tempting.

"No," insisted Vincent.

"I am meant only to suffer; I have long ago come to this conclusion. Do not worry about me. I have learned to endure. Nothing can hurt me more than what has already befallen me. So, please, Vincent Valentine, lay your pain, your sorrows, your sins, unto me and be free. Give me your despair."

"You're nuts."


	7. Appetizers

_**Blood Feast**_

_**Chapter 7: The Appetizers**_

* * *

Vincent knew insanity. He worked for an entire company's worth of loony bins. The craziest of them all took apart his body and stitched it back together in ways he might never truly find out. And the gunman had his own brand of crazy clawing just beneath the surface, complete with individual personalities and bloodlusts.

He couldn't believe Yatsui's very well. His kind was rare, might even have been the rarest. Some sort of… messianic martyr complex, this man had. Had he heard him right? That he was only meant to suffer? That couldn't have been the truth of a soul, not even Vincent, although there were times he considered the notion given how his life, the lives of those around him, had turned out. But other than that…

"Vincent, please, let me do this for you.

"Are we not kindred? We have suffered injustice, have wronged and been wronged, and lost those most dear to us, have we not? But you, you still have a chance; your life can still be salvaged yet from the shadowy void prepared to engulf you when you let down your guard, even an ounce, one day. Go on; take this chance that I proffer you. Take it and shed your pain for me to devour and make as my own." Yatsui's heavy eyes softened so that Vincent thought he'd start weeping any second now, like the beaten child his face sometimes projected. His normally very quiet voice dripped with something akin to sinister. Vincent had to avert his own eyes from the mounting debacle. He felt the potential embarrassment make his skin crawl already.

"I can't do that, whatever you're asking," he answered. "It's my pain and mine alone. It's not your decision to make what I do with it."

"… why?"

"What?"

"Why do you refuse? This is your chance, your truest chance for peace at last, all that ails you removed once and for all. This is my calling. I must pay. I must feel pain to repent for the anguish I myself had wrought." Before he could take another step closer, Vincent cocked his gun and pointed it at Yatsui's feet. The man's head hung low, his ashen pink sweep of hair obscuring his face. From those words spoken so far, a picture painted itself ever more clearly. None of it changed the fact that he was a psycho, but he did seem less likely to be a killer psycho. He spoke too much in earnest, too earnest to be an act. Although, how could he ever be sure? There were murderers that acted under veneers far sweeter and natural.

Vincent started to feel shamefully drawn to this man now more than ever, if only in an effort to find out why he acted this way, why he wanted for what he pleaded. Sure, Yatsui talked of loss and sins and needing to pay for it all with the pain of others brought onto _his own being, _but what he needed was background. He never did say who or what he really was, but he wasn't human, this was quite plain. He needed something more than a willing martyr in fine clothes, a voluntary victim for all the grief and agony of everyone else as payment for his own mysterious sins. He wanted history. Did this make him worse off than Vincent? The gunman's self-punishment was restless slumber in the basement of Shinra Manor, for however long repentance took to wipe the slate clean. But suddenly, everything about him seemed to pale in comparison to Yatsui. That desire to take all pain as his…

Vincent balked at the sensationalism he suffused throughout the situation.

"What say you, Vincent Valentine? Will you still deny my entreaty? If so, then you will have doomed yourself to a lifetime of dreaded running from these beasts that crave your flesh and blood, inside _and_ out— yes, I know more than I let on. Tell me, what is your judgment, and I will understand," Yatsui said in a toneless voice, and added, "however whether it be unconditionally I cannot yet say."

"I say this is all bullshit."

"What can I do to sway you? What can I do to gain your trust that I can bear all your past, present and future agonies in place of you yourself? If it must be so, then I-"

A bellow reverbed throughout the city's earth and sky, rudely cutting Yatsui's speech short. He raised his eyes heavenward to see birds scatter to the hollows of the valley and hazy blue vault above the ghost metropolis. The air stilled following the cry that died off in equally booming echoes, only to be broken by rhythmic rumbling, seeming to get nearer every second.

"Look."

Yatsui pointed past the grand structure perched at the Forgotten City's heart. Beyond the layered disks and swirling branches of coral, dark shadows arose, glistening and writhing in the late morning sunlight. A pair of immense golden beasts had arisen, crawling out of the chasms onto the shell paths that wound through the city. Behemoth kings. But they were only found in the Northern Crater which had long since caved in. Could they have been asleep here, unbeknownst to any passersby, for years upon years, and now, thanks to whatever cried out in Vincent's blood, had awakened to quell their hunger or wrath? Or mere escapees?

The muscly horned beasts roared again, shaking the earth and cleaving the empty air. They regarded both men's presence but of course, were attracted the one that bore the most enticing scent. The largest of the monstrous couple stalked over the shell buildings towards him, reducing them to fine grit under its weight. The other trailed close in its wake, grunting and snarling and exhaling roiling clouds of steam.

Vincent teetered on a state of indecision. He couldn't immediately decide whether to fight the beasts or flee. If left to rampage, the city would be tread to powder beneath their careless feet, a priceless powder, but that was a fate best avoided for all its precious history. And he could only assume that Cloud would not like that, nor would Aerith were she still alive.

"Yatsui."

"Yes?"

"I can't let those monsters destroy this place. I suggest you help me out here, because I know you will even if I didn't ask," he said. Yatsui set his lean body to more a confident and dignified posture.

"Of course," he replied, his voice as robust as it never had before.

"They're strong. Are you sure?"

The man nodded. "Yes, if it is your will, I will help you."

"Let's go."

The kings stampeded in the men's direction once their sights were clear, houses crumbling from their barreling bulks and thrashing tails. One first charged horns at Vincent, which he dodged for being the quicker than the lumbering beast could ever hope to be. He leapt up high, breezing by the giant claws slashing at his afterimage in their black beads for eyes. Holstering Quicksilver for Death Penalty and switching out its material for others, he fired bullet flares at one beast, unloading a blast dead center in its face. The monster howled, rearing up on its hind legs and slamming back down to the ground with an echoing thud. The Behemoth recovered all too quickly, fin and mane singed, and twirled its body in a circle, tail raised to strike down the gunman. He flipped backward and fired another shot into the beast's flexing hip, forcing the creature to skitter sideways and nearly off the shell path.

"Move!" Yatsui shouted. Just as Vincent turned for a glance, a vast white beam of light shot at the injured monster king, punching through its thick hide. Vincent was propelled back by the energy's sheer force that it threatened to burn away his skin and hair. What kind of materia did he have to summon up that sort of power?

That Behemoth King bared its teeth all the way back to its gums and let out the pained whine of a trampled dog, with a gaping wound that opened onto broken ribs, charred flesh and seeping intestine sucking wetly at the air. The lumbering beast struggled to remain upright. The surviving Behemoth went berserk at the sight of its mortally wounded mate, broke its sights on Vincent and went for Yatsui. With a simple jerk of his body in the opposite direction, he zipped out of harm's immediate way. But the monster kept going, gaining speed, clipping the spikes of a conch shell house along the path.

Vincent gauged Yatsui's trajectory, which arced out into the flatlands of the valley. In acting upon that attack to enrage the beast's companion, he'd managed to wrench its eyes from the prized gunman, and was drawing it from the city where less damage could be sustained.

He darted after the two. Yatsui led the chase, his thin form provoking the monster to hound him ever onward from the City of the Ancients.

Agitated further by the elusive human shaped thing, the Behemoth slowed its pace to an eventual stop, turned its creased and angry snout skyward and bellowed longingly. Yatsui brought himself to a stop as well, curious of the beast's change in behavior. But having had previous experience dealing with these creatures, Vincent knew what the monster was doing. They weren't totally mindless brutes. Somewhere along the way, they found out that swallowing materia gave them access to powers wherever tooth and nail happened to fail them.

Heat gathered in the valley air, making it feel humid and thick as soup on both men's faces. The air then rippled with the congregating heat until spheres of superhot flame materialized from all the frenzied molecules rubbing madly together.

"We have to get out of here!" Vincent cried out to the other man.

"What?"

"MOVE!" he barked, and then turned to flee the blast zone.

"We will not escape," Yatsui voiced in finality.

"What? You're wrong," Vincent asserted. But the pale man shook his head slowly.

"We cannot. But… I will take the brunt of the attack. I will protect you."

"This is one of those days where I wish I were Yuffie." Vincent scrounged for materia in spite of knowing he didn't have the one or two pieces that would've meant the most at a time like this. He turned and swapped in Quicksilver. Even though a few headshots would stop the beast from casting its flare, its death rattle would trip and summon something equally devastating. Such was the wrath of the behemoth, double-edged and crushing.

"No need to fear but fear itself."

"Some help you are."

The spheres of frantic flame and blistering air ignited, billowing from a single focal point exacted by the monster's horns. The spherical clouds of red, purple and yellow flame expanded out, taking in all the oxygen it could to grow and thrive. Yatsui took a stand before Vincent while he tried to adjust his position for the most damaging shot possible, staring up at the immense well of power head on, watching it and feeling it and smelling it. He splayed his arms apart from his body.

"I will protect. Take all the pain…" But his voice was whittled to nothing by the roar of encroaching fire.

Vincent couldn't stand the heat. This physical torture—though it'd never outright kill him, never in a hundred years, or more— had reached its limit. How could he ever make the shot now if his concentration lost ground? He hissed, his tiny cry of pain eclipsed, too, by the oncoming heat. He embraced his body in agony, sensing the Jenova cells react and wanting and constricting to save their host from unexpected doom. The demons within him roiled, but their crowned manifestation sprung to the surface, the wings of Chaos sprouting from his back, kicking up his crimson cape in wild furls. And the mind of Chaos overcame Vincent's in its distress.

To sing.

It was a guttural, multilayered song, a call.

_**Problem?**_

Chaos gripped the gun tight, making it pop under the stress of his unfettered strength. His arm clicked into position against its target. Despite the heat still burning blisters into Vincent's skin—they healed and healed and healed without fail—the demon weathered the nuisance.

_**This peashooter needs a bit of juice.**_

The Quicksilver crackled with black energy. Chaos squeezed the trigger with gingerness, once, twice, three times in patient succession.

The behemoth's head jerked on impact, the spell dimming and flaring madly like lights before an outage. The snout bloomed open across the side, the horns splintered away with fluttering golden rags of scalp, the skull broke off in chunks of purple mane and dark red brain matter. When three more shots had reduced the monster's head to no more than a stump on its shoulders, the gigantic flare lost its shape, dissipating on the wind. With the bulbs of flame went the smoldering heat.

If there wasn't a brain to send and receive the needed impulses to call out its death rattle, the skies would remain clear once the monster breathed its last.

The Quicksilver shivered, blackened, let out a puff of smoke and crumbled to ash in Chaos's hand, having overtaxed its usefulness.

Just as well, the demon Chaos acknowledged that his borrowed time had passed and then settled back into his personal recesses of Vincent's flesh, wings, consciousness, and all. Vincent fell hard to his knees, depleted from having sustained the demon for even those few short moments.

Coral Valley hushed, retaining the calm it had celebrated for years and years before the disturbance.

"Vincent Valentine… Just, what was that just now?" Yatsui asked, his wonder unrestrained as he approached the exhausted gunman.

"My…" Vincent clutched his claw close, recovered his breath in a few deep gulps and carefully got to his feet. "It's nothing."

"That was more than nothing. The stench became so strong when from your back sprang those wings. That is a part of your pain, is it not?" he inquired.

Vincent grunted, dusted off his knees with some well-placed slaps. Anything other than answer.

"Your body houses such vicious power, a power you must fear and loathe at the same time. You dread that it may one day devour you whole, finally making you the monster you never wanted to become. At last, in all its terrible glory. Is that not so?"

"Don't bother." Vincent spun from Yatsui and started away, abandoning the other man to his own devices.

"Vincent… What an admirable heart. What I would not give… to have a bit of it for my own."

* * *

_From Another Sixth, 20xx: I can't bear to delete this long, old ass author's note. Fragments of the past? Yeah…_

_From Sixth: I know I added some details here and there with Satan Impact, because I didn't remember what it did exactly, but it sounded equally nice, no? And what about Yatsui? Slowly, his past is being revealed more and more. Soon you'll know what he really is, which will be no more different than how I originally designed him, but just a few particulars changed that won't dare detract from my OC's intriguing persona. And what'll you think Vincent will do when that time comes? Will he succumb to Yatsui's plea or won't he? It's sorta up to me, sorta not, I dunno. The story's all in the fingers._

_Oh, and, Narukye, I'd been thinking of advice to give on writing. I'm not very good when it comes to doing that, but I'll do my best. Ahem._

_First of all, some of these things may apply to just me, unless you or anyone else has the same problem. Okay, now, one thing is that it never hurts to proofread, as eyes have the tendency to play tricks on you. The computer itself may neglect a few things regarding grammar, too, so you have to be extra careful when proofreading._

_Second, it always pays to study other people's writing in learning what and what not to do when it comes to writing stories. Me? I've read a lot of Anne Rice, though not calling myself avid fan of her writing, but something of a fan nonetheless. I've also read a lot of Elizabeth George's detective novels and a whole bunch of other books of varying styles. I also watch a good deal of television, listening to how people talk._

_Third, and I will admit this, I have several thesauruses and dictionaries. Whenever I pass by a word I'm not too sure of, I check it out. In taking the time to do that, I've built up my vocabulary very high and have the ability to easily describe things in more ways than one. I'm not saying you should have to do the same thing, I'm just saying what this did for me. Heh, right…_

_And, then, of course, there are games. They're the main reason I started writing more than I did in junior high. That and because my junior high gave me creative writing class when I really wanted computer lit. Yeah, I don't regret that anymore. Anyway, back to games. So far, I believe the series with the most sophisticated dialogue is the Xeno series. Grandia 2 was pretty good. Lunar has been known for its humor, which I enjoy. Final Fantasy is perfect for drama, romance and adventure, always. Vagrant Story I should mention for its medieval air and dialogue. And who shouldn't forget all the other greats that…_

_I'm talking too much again. This is all I can think of as good advice and sources toward better writing and whatnot that isn't really in books or hasn't been said already. Sorry if this wasn't what you were looking for in advice, but it's all certainly helped me out. So, with that said and done…_

TO BE CONTINUED


	8. Where Angels Fear to Tread

_Blood Feast_

_Chapter 8: Where Angels Fear to Tread_

* * *

The materia hadn't worked on creatures whose thought processes bordered on self-aware. Behemoths had the intelligence of angry adolescent humans, the bulk of freighters. Materia no larger than their taste buds would, of course, be child's play to things like them. Easily toyed with, easily ignored. If only he had some that was a little more mature. But Cloud, Yuffie, even Reeve…

Manufactured materia never did boast much power, anyways, but accessibility.

No matter. Vincent left the Forgotten City and continent far, far behind him. Now, despite a few annoyances, he was well on his way to the next destination.

Some would say that it might have been too soon to make a return. He pictured it now, to near photographic perfection: The perpetual red shroud hanging on the air. The scorched and twisted structures which reached for the sky, or stood staked deep into the earth. Hillocks of scrap as far as the eye could see. The occasional shallow grave or open pit of corpses, man or beast, yet to be marked or cleaned away accordingly. The odd building here or there, touched by a miracle, therefore unscathed, therefore still occupied.

The dead moon that took its sweet time drifting farther off into space.

Beyond that, the sky above mimicked an eternal gray noon, a sky once thick with the choking fumes of poison city life replaced with the haze of cloying, red space dust. The air reeked even then, after untold months, of scorched trash and debris. Ruins of houses and stores lain scattered all around the freshly desolate battlefield. Pillars of burnt stone and torn webs of charred cables adorned the former sectored slums, emanating the miasma of an urban necropolis, a graveyard for towns of the innocent and corrupt and everything in between. In the meantime that Vincent strode through the skeletal remains of Midgar, he would discern a lost corpse here or there that he pictured in much the same way before his arrival, remnants of people who refused to leave their homes or were unable to flee or brave the angry storms that spiraled down from above. To be lost in abysmal silence until the day cleansing gales would wipe the land of their bones turned to dust, back to where they belong with the Planet.

Midgar. Poor-

"What?" Vincent wrenched his head at the air. To his right, out of the very corner of his eye, he caught a fleeting flash of movement. It disappeared round a giant fallen plate from the upper levels. It was miles in diameter, slanted towards the ground with buildings spilling off the side. Vincent, alarmed by that sound, pursued it to wherever its destination lay. He dashed off, Death Penalty at his fingertips. He tracked the unseen entity for a few miles before realizing where he was headed. Through the carcass of a sector, the den of the crooked and depraved, Wall Market, with its crushed and abandoned bars and filthy shops and disease-ridden brothels, places to which he had to admit visiting once or twice long, long ago. Past an old playground destroyed twice over. South to where he had once known the Sector 5 Slums to be, now comprised only of mounds of trash, wood, metal, and stone. A quick veering off to the east.

To the church.

Aerith's church, her second memorial. It was merely a pile of rubble, but its interior remained accessible in spite of the devastation dealt. Vincent entered warily, hand poised on his gun, eyes searching the cold empty environs of the still hallowed site. Still here, somehow.

"Vincent," said a voice.

His voice.

He looked ahead, up the aisle that separated the splintered pews. Yatsui knelt at the edge of the upturned floorboards of the church floor, cleared to make way for the garden that Aerith had long ago planted. Vincent recalled the many yellow blossoms that thrived under a solitary beam of sunlight when he and Cloud and the others had visited Midgar a time after her death. But over the pale man's head, he could see the remainder of her garden dwindling and struggling under the lack of light that Meteor denied. All that remained were a few dull buds and wilting stalks of shriveled petals drooping to the ground.

Vincent neared the other man. "You know, turning up wherever I go is a pretty picture you do not paint for yourself."

He made no effort to answer. He solely gazed down at the sickly bed, then taking a moment to touch a finger to one of the flowers. "Poor little flowers. How you strive for life that might soon end. Caught in the shadow of death. Where is the one who brought you life and nurtured you? Gone, it seems. But not by choice, I deem. Poor dying blossoms, it is not your fault; you are not to blame for any of this. You need not the pain you suffer. Bestow it to me so you may live again…"

"Yatsui," Vincent called, growing agitated. Yatsui appeared to flinch at his own name this time. He glanced over his shoulder then aimed his eyes back upon the diminished garden.

"Vincent. Why did you come here? This place, so full of pain. Makes my soul, if I had one, reel in shock and empathy. It… is almost too much to bear."

"I assume you think my business is your business now, that I should concede my every intention," he remarked. "Is that right?"

"I sense hostility, but harm is the last thing on my mind, Mr. Valentine," Yatsui sighed. "As is alienation. In any case, I should apologize. I know my behavior is untoward, brash, even. We are not familiar with each other."

Vincent glimpsed an opportunity to, at last, glean Yatsui's true nature. He took a few steps closer to the man brooding over the neglected garden, preparing himself.

"Hm. Pain is what makes a human… human, no? To feel no pain is to not be human. Could that be why I desire it so? To be human, like you, my dear Vincent Valentine?" he asked in the most innocent voice a man could ever have. The child in him reared itself up yet again. Vincent stared down at the pate of his gently shaking head. "What am I doing? I ask for the agony of other people, in turn, dehumanizing them. But all will feel it, nonetheless. Pain is endless…"

"So, what are you, then? If you aren't human?" the gunman queried, finally. Yatsui chuckled, an eerily quiet noise that could have gone wholly unnoticed.

"So, you really wish to know? Is it _that_ important to know what I am?"

"If it'll shed light on your ridiculous behavior, I'd think so."

"Haha. Well, then… I see your need to learn the truth is incredibly strong for someone like you. And your understanding of what exceeds the natural, given your being surrounded by it. The supernatural." Yatsui rose to his full height before Vincent, facing him with staid but dignified eyes that could most certainly stifle the defiant or wither the meek if they really wanted or needed. His translucent lips crooked in the corners, the precursor to a smile that ultimately never came to light. "I ask once more, do you wish to see, to know, what I truly am? You might be surprised, you might be drawn to fear, you might…"

"You underestimate me if you think what you have to show could scare me," Vincent replied curtly. Yatsui smirked finally at the other man's candor.

"What confidence. I should have known better than to say that about a man such as your stature and bearing. Alright, I shall show you my true self, the form that has isolated me from humankind since time immemorial. But beware; I do not retract what I said moments ago."

Vincent shrugged in response. He never expected him to do anything of the sort. He was only concerned with knowing the truth, as far as why this annoying man continued to make his presence known when and wherever, at any given time. And for further insight into why he hungered for people's pain.

He nodded at Yatsui. And the man returned the gesture, smiling sadly at the same time.

Yatsui splayed his arms out from his body, slender fingered hands supine. He lifted his chin at a slight angle and closed his eyes. Every external noise seemed to fall off into silence in this strange ritual that the man had begun to perform. But that quiet was shattered quick by a mild wind that picked up out of nowhere, running through both men's clothes, but mostly it centered on Yatsui's feet, causing his robe to whip wild over his long legs.

Vincent staggered back, spying particles of gray light materialize beyond the dusty red air, dashing in vivid motions like fireflies fighting for their lives. The air thickened with the fragments of ethereal light abounding and swirling in circles. A font had sprung from Yatsui's body, not quite blinding but overwhelming, nonetheless. The luminosity formed as mist, swallowed him up, his outline the only visible indication that he still existed there.

It took a moment for Vincent to realize that he was frowning, a hard frown in something like disbelief. The misty illumination began to take form. A figure drew out of the mist, becoming taller than anything humanly possible, rising seven feet, perhaps more— Vincent doubted Barret could compare, for once.

He looked closer, focusing on something that appeared to be deviate from human shape. It was one of Yatsui's arms. As he saw it, it wasn't an arm, but an extremity molded into something else entirely. It was a wing, which arced high over his head, its tips below brushing the floor as it grew fuller and fuller.

"How is this for truth?"

Vincent fought the temptation to pull his gun on the eerie force that resonated throughout the church debris.

He had nothing to say this time. He could only look on at the spectacle in subdued awe.

There were few things in life he never knew existed, or quite existed. This was one of them.

His body swathed in a gray fog, his face still white like salt but all features of it obliterated, save for those dull golden eyes. The wing that replaced his right arm was like a chiseled phosphorescent slab of marble, the hazy down exuding a generous glow.

"This is what I am," said the hollow bell of a voice. "Are you not scared? Tell me, please, what think you?"

Silence.

"Vincent-"

"So, you're some kind of spirit? Or—and I hesitate to say this—an ang…"

The figure raised its translucent hand to stay the supposition of his nature. Then he let his hand fall back to his narrow hip, with wisps of light rising then fading to nothing after that steady movement of his arm.

"No. There is no name for what I am. You could say I am nonexistence personified. Or you could say not. Think whatever you will of me after this but never believe me to be anything more than that."

_Is this real?_ Vincent thought. In seeing this form, what Yatsui called his true from, he couldn't help thinking of some sort of angel at the very least. Or rather… half an angel? But what kind of psychopomp had an arm for a wing? Fallen? Unfinished? On the verge of a death that distorted its body in funny ways before breaking apart?

"What are you thinking, Vincent? Please tell me," the voice entreated, which sounded as though it traveled through a long, barren tunnel just to reach his ears. Vincent sensed a gap, some indeterminable distance open up between him and Yatsui, who was now clear as day not human. All notions of empathy for the man—not a man—seemed to drop away. Despite that he should've been more understanding. They weren't that different, but…

He just couldn't figure it out.

"Well, that does it." Vincent lowered his gun. "This explains _something_. But what? So, you're a monster then? Something that eats the unwanted parts of humans? The mind? The body? The soul? Which is it? And why?"

"I do not know. In that perspective, I find it difficult to answer, but what an astute inquiry you bring to the table." The creature paused. "It may vary from person to person. The pain insurmountable may lie in their flesh, the agony may burrow deep into their soul, suffering may flood the mind, overflowing to the point of suffocation. Had my sustenance always been such? I cannot-"

"Vincent?"

Heads turned to the entrance of the church.

That shock of sun-yellow hair was sight for sore eyes at this point in time. The accompanying grayish blond, not quite as much.

Vincent sighed and glanced back to Yatsui, who had vanished in a helix of dim mist, leaving behind dusty footprints at the broken floorboards. He bent down and ran a cursory finger through them, feeling the grain between his thumb and index finger.

Cloud and Cid strolled up the aisle to their silent companion, taking places on each side of him.

"What are you doing here?" asked the younger of the two blonds, patting the gunman's shoulder in greeting. "I thought you went back to sleep."

Vincent studied the dust a little closer. Was it salt, or sand? The grains felt crude, like microscopic cubes. Then he aimed his eyes upon Cloud and started with his typical emotionless pitch, "I could ask the same of you and Cid. In another manner of speaking, of course."

"Well, I…" Cloud shrugged modestly. "I needed to come here for something… and I called on Cid to bring me to Midgar. He's just tagging along for a bit."

"An' what the hell are you doin' here? Finally rose up out of that moldy-ass coffin for good this time?" Cid remarked, a cigarette pressed between his windblown lips. Vincent glared at him then down at the ground. _Where did he slip off to? I can only hope it's for good this time but… The question remains, what is he? _"Hey, earth to Vincent! What are we, chopped liver? Why I oughta-"

"Cid, you oughta calm down. I hope you don't ever have kids," Cloud warned. The older blond backed up a step, rubbing at the back of his head as though embarrassed.

"Hey, what in many hells do kids have to do with anything…"

"Anyway. Vince, what's up? This isn't the usual place for a walk in the park," Cloud said.

"I have a little problem. Thought I'd pick around Shinra HQ for some records," he answered, eyes rising up to the collapsed roof. He distinguished a faint shadow lingering amongst the broken support beams that still managed not to cave in on themselves. Vincent leered.

"A problem?" Cloud repeated curiously. "What kind of problem?"

"Monsters!" Cid exclaimed.

"Hold on, Cid. Now, what's your problem, Vince? Maybe we can-"

"Fuck, Cloud, you spiky haired shithead! Monsters! Some goddamn monsters are here!" the man blurted out, wheeling Cloud in the direction of the church's threshold. Gathered there at the doorway were a horde of skittering things like giant worms on legs, more legs and circular sets of overgrown teeth. Whole Eaters. Cloud drew his ever imposing broadsword over a shoulder and jumped in front of Cid. "Shit, and me without my spear!"

"These guys aren't a problem. But why so many in one place?" the young blond noted. Vincent drew Death Penalty, releasing its safety.

"They're here because of me," he said, sighing.

"What? Why?"

"They smell something on me. I think it might be Jenova."

"Great. Even when she's dead, she still causes trouble," Cloud scoffed.

"Vincent, draw back," warned a whisper. Vincent blinked upward.

"What're you scheming?

"Cloud." Vincent snatched Cloud back a few feet, just prior to a crackling boom ripping through the church and a balloon of lightning hammering down on the Whole Eaters. It burst once it touched the ground, sending the monsters flying in every direction, splattering like hapless insects on a windshield as they hit the walls.

"What in the fuckin' hell was that?" Cid yelled in surprise.

"Don't look now, because here comes something else!" Cloud jabbed a finger towards the burnt frame of the doorway. Another entity lurked just outside, grunting, snorting, and snarling softly as though surveying its surroundings in the greatest of patience. The ground somewhat rumbled with each careful step of the thing but unseen by the little male band.

"It's definitely a big one," Vincent said in a low voice.

"You'd think that Meteor would've offed all of the big things that couldn't hide in Midgar's nooks and crannies," Cloud opined.

"Hell, you forget about the network of train tunnels that run through and under Midgar? The sewer systems, all o' that?" Cid told him. "There's plenty o' places for the big asses to hide out in."

A shadow swished by the doorway, colliding with the outer wall. The decrepit structure rattled and shook with dust and rubble seeping out of its many crevices, also dislodging a few loose bricks from the pieces of walls that still stood to this day. They clattered on the floor, alarming the faceless entity and prompting it to move closer to the church's entry. A round, glowing yellow eye peered inside, glimpsing the three men huddled within.

"Shit." Cloud exhaled tiredly. "A Behemoth. Dammit, they're like roaches."

"Hmm," Vincent sounded thoughtfully. Fortunately, it was only the weaker of its species, but powerful, still. The violet skinned beast wailed and jutted its heavy claw through the doorway. Cloud, Vincent and Cid pulled back to the hindermost corners of the church, overstepping the flowerbed. The monster's angry movements splintered the wood frame, widening the ingress and allowing the beast to actually poke its bulky, horned head in up to its shoulders. It bellowed again as it forcefully squirmed towards them.

"I think I have some materia on me. Hold on." Cloud rummaged through his pockets. "Right, here we go." He inserted the chosen materia into the base of his sword and lifted the broad, towering blade above his head then thrust it at the monster vying to cross the threshold. Energy amassed at the very tip in the form of noxious, green gas. The monster recoiled straight away at the sight of the poisonous vapor, instead switching its hind quarters around in one quick motion, its tail smashing into the brittle wood and stone. The doorway crumbled without a fight, obstructing everyone and everything's view of each the other.

Outside the beast roared, hungrily padding about and picking at the debris.

"Great, we're stuck. Way to go, asshole," Cid grumbled.

"No, we're not," Cloud snapped. "We're just-"

A wooden board fell from above, just narrowly missing the blond's head. He sidestepped the trash and looked up to the buckled ceiling.

"Something's up there," he muttered.

The lurking Behemoth suddenly keened in unusual intensity. Another rattling boom had erupted, followed by an earsplitting shriek and a resonant thump on the ground outside.

"What the hell just happened?" Cid exclaimed.

"We can pick our way out and see, c'mon." Cloud approached the rubble and moved it to the sides, using his sword as leverage. Vincent soon joined him at his side, pushing boards and stone out of the way. Cid was last to assist in the labor, swearing under his breath at the work to be done.

Working through the debris took very little time with the muscle combined. And once they were free, they soon discovered what had occurred unbeknownst to them. The Behemoth lay slain, and by a single, mysterious man as far as Cloud and Cid was concerned. He stood next to the desiccated corpse of the monster and calmly twisted on his heels when he heard their footfalls behind him. He grinned sadly.

"Oh, hello. This beast was bothering you, was it not?" said the man. The two blonds approached him warily while Vincent lingered before the church.

"Did you do this?" asked a bewildered Cloud.

"I suppose I did." The man politely held out his hand. "My name is Yatsui. You are?"

"Uh…" He glanced at Yatsui's incredibly white, welcoming hand, and then eventually offered his own once his brain processed the gesture, shaking it limply but once. The soft grip carried with it silent clarion bells, ringing with some strength that something was not quite right here. "The name's Cloud. And uh, that's Cid, and that's-"

"Ah, Vincent Valentine, so we meet again," Yatsui swiftly interposed with that distinctively modest and melancholic smile. Vincent narrowed his crimson eyes to their smallest.

"You met before?" queried Cloud.

"Yes, some time ago in a charming hamlet not far from here. He is quite the taciturn one," remarked the pale-faced man, his eyes glinting with a mischievous sparkle. Vincent crossed his arms in each other, his glare steady. He found it a tad odd to see Yatsui so effortlessly feign congeniality as if they hadn't encountered each other just a few minutes ago and changed into a towering gray ghost.

"Hey, any of you smell that?" Cid announced abruptly, pulling the cigarette from his lips and flicking it on the ground. Both Yatsui and Vincent riveted their sights on him. "Smells all flowery and shit."

"Hey, now that you mention it…" Cloud sniffed the air and tracked the scent to Yatsui himself. "It's… you."

"Pardon?"

"You're the one that smells like flowers," the swordsman pointed out.

"Oh, do I? I never notice," Yatsui replied with a humbled expression. His company exchanged uncertain glances before Cloud resumed questioning the Behemoth's slayer.

"Anyway, if you don't mind my asking-"

"By all means."

"-what's your business here? This isn't exactly the place of opportunity it used to be."

"I could ask you the same, sir. I would not favor this a locale to visit at one's leisure."

"Well, I'm sure we all have our reasons."

"Reasons which I may never comprehend. This city was built on blood and sadness and pain…"

"What?"

Vincent was the only one aware of Yatsui's exhausting empathy. He was beginning to see that the man had the capability of seeing things beyond the tangible without first knowing a thing about them. Of course. One attuned to agony found it easy to discern when they made it their life's mission to seek and destroy. Or seek and consume, in his case.

He suddenly felt the need to leave, to abandon Midgar in its entirety, and stepped forward, tapping Cloud's shoulder.

"We should leave."

"Oh, I guess you're right. But you guys go on ahead. I have something I need to do first…"


	9. Shadowy Regales

_Blood Feast_

_Chapter 9: Shadowy Regales_

* * *

Vincent and Cid, with Yatsui ever playing the tagalong, milled around a scavenger camp on the outer wall of Midgar, just beyond what was left of the Sector 5 slums. They awaited Cloud to join them once he finished whatever errand it was he came to do. Near to an hour had passed, with the blond swordsman finally emerging from the ruins of the black city. His face and pants were smudged with red tinged dirt, beyond that his expression one of mild satisfaction. General decision was then made for Cid to take them to Kalm for a brief rest. A bit of goading had to be done on Yatsui's behalf before he, too, was allowed aboard. Together they disembarked on what Cid liked to call Lil Charger, the Tiny Bronco's aerojet successor.

The flight from city to hamlet, spent somewhat in quiet tension, lasted about a quarter short of an hour. Cid grew disgruntled from Yatsui's distracting aroma. Not even the usual adrenaline rush from flying saved him. He grumbled and cursed and wondered. And when they reached Kalm, he was all too happy to finally escape the cabin stinking of flowers.

Everyone filed out of the jet and strolled into town to the inn conveniently established off the main street leading in. Cloud went to the counter and paid the registrar some five hundred gil for midday board and lunch.

"Man, I'm beat." Cid dragged up the stairs to the inn's second floor behind Cloud and Yatsui.

"All you did was fly a plane. Don't tell me that's hard work," Cloud said skeptically.

"Shit, like you know what it takes to be a pilot. Shut your goddamn cakehole."

"My, your companion surely revels in strong words," Yatsui uttered with a tinge of mirth. Upon fully scaling the staircase, Cid broke away from the group and threw himself down, backside first, onto the bed closest to the window. He withdrew a pack of cigarettes from the inner pocket of his aviator jacket, shook one of the little white cylinders free and stuck it between his lips.

"Fuck, I'll swear what I want, whenever I want. It's a fuckin' free world all around us," he grunted, flicking out a lighter and kindling the end of his cigarette. The smoke easily cut through Yatsui's scent but came nowhere near to snuffing it.

"So, hey uh… Yatsui," Cloud started, turning on his heel to the pale man and watching Vincent eventually ascend to the top of the staircase. "How did you get acquainted with Vincent here? He's not very friendly."

"Well, aside from encountering Vincent Valentine here in lovely little Kalm, I had run him into again in a place called Nibelheim," Yatsui explained, meanwhile adjusting the cuffs of his waistcoat sleeves. "I had offered my assistance—to no great avail— with his current… situation."

"Situation. Do you mean his thing with the monsters?" Cloud asked. Both observed the raven-haired man pass them by to a corner of the room and lean his thin body against the wall, securely wrapped in his crimson cape. He peered back at them languidly over the over the rim of his belted collar, thusly cementing his general disinterest in Yatsui's interaction with the others.

"I just need to get rid of this 'smell', or whatever it encompasses," Vincent muttered pensively. "But everyone who knew what'd been done to my body is dead. So, what can I do? Are there records I can consult? That's why I came to Midgar."

"Did you say smell?" Cloud voiced. "You don't smell… do you? All I smell is him."

"There's a smell," he reiterated.

"How'd you figure that out?"

"I went to Nanaki." Vincent was unsure whether Yatsui wanted the others to know that it was he who first distinguished this barely detectable stench, at least by humans. But then the man casually stepped forward with a seemingly delicate hand splayed across his chest.

"Actually, it was I who discovered it at first, but he preferred a second opinion from that rather interesting beast he called a companion," he confessed. Cloud dedicated his glowing Mako blue eyes back to Vincent. He only nodded prior a quick glare at Yatsui.

"So, now what?" he inquired. "What're you going to do? If you were planning on heading up to the tower, I'd run that by Reeve first. He's been picking at the place since the storms have calmed down. He might have what you're looking for."

He pondered that creature once more. The one that Yatsui revealed himself to be. What could he really do that would free Vincent from the encumbering shackles of his ordeal? From all of his pain, according to the man's own words? What significance did that strange form hold? He still considered the lot of it nonsense, a notion best left to the birds. Yet…

Vincent shook his head. No. Humoring the very thought that Yatsui could be capable of anything other than annoyance left a bitter taste in the back of his throat. The man was a hack and a monster that'd yet to show his true colors. The grayness, the melancholy, it was all a ploy. Surely.

What was there to do? There was nothing else _to do_ but search out Reeve and see what his excavations had turned up, and if any of it pertained to the gunman and his condition that he might use to rectify it. Running wasn't an option. Yatsui wasn't an option. In fact, Yatsui was laughable in his entire being. He wanted no more of him.

Out of the corner of his scarlet eye, he noticed Yatsui stroll to the window and view the tranquil townscape below.

_Vincent, I gave you a choice, _his ghost of a voice dared brave, seeming to emanate from the back of his head into the air. Neither Cloud nor Cid took heed, or they couldn't. _It sits before you, oh so simply. Patiently. There are no strings attached, there are no secrets hidden. It is as easy to grasp as your lungs take air. I require nothing but acceptance. And once it is done, I will leave with the wind. I promise you._

He noted Yatsui lift a hand to his hair to smooth it back from his porcelain cheek and then hug his arms close. Then, as if he were capable of the very same ability to project a voiceless voice, Vincent mused in return, _You can't really expect me to do that, can you? If this silly act you've been putting out is in fact real, do you think I can just unload my burdens on another like that? You're talking to the wrong person._

_I thought we were kindred._

_Vincent's brow had knit together, troubled. __Maybe for a second. The problem is we don't think alike. And you were probably never human to begin with. So, how well do you understand our condition to make your judgments? And then hound someone every step of the way until they break down and surrender? Is that even the right way to do things?_

Cloud surveyed the two men in their extended silence. In spite of the fact that no words had been exchanged thus far, the subtle shifts in posture, the tiny tips of the head to one side, and especially that crease taking up residence between Vincent's eyebrows, it all spoke volumes of an undercurrent of communication streaming back and forth across the room. For a time, he sensed how alike they were or could've been if he knew more about Yatsui. But that only went as far as their standing.

Cid, on the other hand, grew restless underneath the prolonged hush. His eyes shifted to and fro from man to man while dragging endlessly on his ever shortening cigarette, carelessly letting the ashes fall on his chest. He exhaled a great cloud of smoke and sighed, twisting from them and gazing up the ecru painted walls.

_Vincent, is it that you care?_

The gunman found pride that he was incapable of blushing, for he feared that he might have done so at that moment. Did he really care? Of course he didn't want to see anyone trying to suffer _for _his sake. But did he care about Yatsui as an individual?

_Vincent Valentine, what have I declared once before? I am only meant to suffer. So you need not worry about me. I am beyond repair, I need not hide it. The best I can do is be a martyr, as you may so sweetly put it, a martyr for those who yet have a chance to turn back on the road that I am doomed to walk forever. Until my amends are accepted…_

_I can't do that_, Vincent blared.

Yatsui flashed a sad, secret smile. _You stubborn human man. I admire your staunch position. I am not worthy. But… I will not surrender to your resolve in this matter. Not until you see the light I am offering you in reciprocation for your pain. The light of a normal life that you have won back._

_Over my dead-_

"Dammit, I had enough of this silent shit! Someone talk!" Cid barked. The other three men stared at the agitated pilot with wide eyes, and Cloud's mouth slightly agape. He felt their gazes burning and calmly cleared his throat thereafter. "As you were."

Vincent sighed in seeming fatigue and pushed himself from the wall, fiddling with the fingerless glove of his right hand. "Nothing's accomplished just standing here like this. I should look for Reeve. Cloud-"

"Sure, he's right here in-"

Yatsui piped up suddenly with that tired voice of his, "Vincent, this is your last…"

"Stop," the gunman declared, his claw hefted in warning. "I'm leaving."

"What?" Cloud quickly spun around to Vincent, puzzled. "What was that about? Hey, Vincent, wait. I can show you there if you want."

"Hey, what about Shinra mansion's basement?" Cid suggested, subsequent to a long, last drag on his cigarette. "That lab must've had somethin' that could help. I'm kinda surprised you haven't turned that shit upside down an' inside out before coming all the way out here, way yer talking."

"I practically lived down there, Cid. I would know every crevice."

"Fuck, I dunno. You might turn into a monster bloodhound when the moon's out, don't mean you can hunt down _everything_ ever, 'specially on the first try. That's what a second run-through is fer, asshole. Or a guide."

Cloud stepped forward. "So, what's it going to be?"

"There is one simple solution," Yatsui announced. All divided attention shot to him in one swift sweep. He interlocked his slender hands and touched his two index fingers to his lips to garner the focus of those around him. "But it is something to which your dear friend refuses consent."

"Huh? Like what? Tell us," Cloud said, unusually interested in hearing the newcomer's proposition.

"Well?" Cid grunted. "You gonna tell us or ain'tcha?"

Yatsui shot a fleeting glance at the gunman, whose leer was on the verge of igniting a dark fire in the center of the room. "I cannot say. It is between me and him. I offer my help but on each occasion that I have, he has refused."

"Vincent?" The blond peered innocently in the other's direction. In spite of himself, Vincent shied away from the Mako eyes burning questioning holes into his face. "You mind telling us what this guy's plan is? Is it safe?"

"You don't know what he asks for in return. He-" Vincent paused. Would he really let him say it? That this bizarre creature in human skin was some self-appointed martyr and promised a return to the lands of milk and honey if they gave up a vital part of their being to him? There wasn't to mention Yatsui neglecting how such could even be accomplished, what the results really, truly entailed. Was the person left behind still a person?

Yatsui's eyes ventured adamancy, persevering even in regards to the fact that Vincent could so easily expose him to Cloud and Cid, therein amassing the forces that could potentially end him before he achieved his purpose if they even so much perceived him as dangerous, evil. But, suspiciously, he made no move.

"You would do that to me?" his eyes probed with such utterly agonizing innocence. Vincent only gazed back with his own scarlet eyes, which in themselves weren't as innocent, as pure. He scowled darkly and moved across the room towards the stairs in a drifting, wraithlike stride.

"I'm leaving," he said in his departure, not looking back. But he knew that Yatsui most likely made some sort of gesticulation as to following him. "Word of advice, Yatsui: You follow me, and I will fill you full of holes. Cid, Cloud, later. I'm sure I can find Reeve on my own."

_I will not give up, Vincent Valentine. No matter what you may say._

_The pilot sat up straight and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, slapping a hand on his knee in disbelief. "Hot damn, what'd you suggest doing to tick Vince off like that, huh? What, stick it in his ass or something? Yeah, that'd help real good."_

_"Cid…"_


	10. Solitude of Earthen Hollow

_From Sixth:__ This chapter has the biggest addition or revision of all, circa 20xx. The entire scene with Reeve. It's not a story without Reeve, ain't it? Or not, whatever. I just felt like adding him in. I wish I used him more often because he's hot and voiced by Jameson Pierce. Anybody by Jameson Pierce is insta… Ranting. Whatever. This is pretty much all the input I'm… inputting here._

_Wait. I just noticed I had Yuffie and some major town hopping towards the middle. Looks I'm swapping all that out._

* * *

_Blood Feast_

_Chapter 10: Solitude of Earthen Hollow_

Reeve had always been a kind man, even amongst the varied ranks of ShinRa. He never allowed their check-your-conscience-at-the-door policy to lay him out and crush him utterly under its thumb. The man would remain human and humble to the very end.

That wasn't to say his humility couldn't possibly lead him to his doom someday, or stretch him so far thin that he'd have no choice but to give up the ghost of hospitality and repentance at long last, to pass it on to the next bleeding heart. But it was a better way to die than most.

This minor reflection surprised Vincent when he met with Reeve on the steps of one of Kalm's largest buildings, converted from a floundering, old hotel to a bustling refuge for Midgar's survivors. They sat in a sun-washed back office on the first floor, with the other man offering him tea and crackers in greeting. It'd been a long time since they last saw each other—at the big celebration following the Planet's narrow triumph over Meteor, as a matter of fact—and they had parted ways on very few words but still good terms. Here they were again, not far off from where they last kept each other company among others. Reeve's presence he found quite refreshing to some of those his prior, mainly Yatsui.

Across the desk at which both men sat, several manila folders lightly decked in dust, water and fire damage, slipped and slid from one tentative hand to the other. Vincent took and splayed open a fairly light sheaf in his lap, meanwhile sipping from a small cup he palmed in his good hand rather than grip by its handle.

Reeve munched on a cracker then diligently wiped at his fine goatee. "Well?"

"My whole life before my eyes, barring a few details," Vincent said with an unimpressed grunt. "Vital details."

"No good?"

"I should have known. I _did_ know. Hojo was notorious for withholding information from the rest of the company. Frivolous bastard. I'm sure you knew this, too. There must be dozens of dossiers worth of unwritten facts, observations, theories, that were locked up in that head of his. Now they're lost with his death."

"Actually…" Before he went on, Reeve took a little swig of tea, then bent down and sifted through a portable file bin on his left. He pulled from it a rich brown leather-bound portfolio and set it atop the nest of discarded documents they'd already perused. "This one may be of interest. A colleague just happened to have stumbled across it during a recent salvage. It'd been wildly mislabeled, and misplaced, as though entirely intentional. It also seems to be a copy of the original, by the paper quality and ink. Remarkable that it held up so well."

"Hm."

"Note the author's name at the top. A Miss… or rather Mrs. Lucrecia Crescent, Ph.D. Frankly, we weren't sure what to do with it. The Science Department at ShinRa was never any of my business, but I didn't know she'd existed until the crisis and that a large portion of her studies fell into obscurity."

Vincent didn't respond immediately. He thumbed through the papers which had been jammed haphazardly into the portfolio. Several pages stuck together where the ink had run off in thin streams and blotches and dried over a period of time. Fortunately, most of it remained legible.

"It seems that she might have had some insight pertaining to your current state."

"… the vital details I was missing."

"Right. Listen, Vincent," Reeve began, sitting forward in his chair, "before your condition gets worse, if it hasn't already, I'm sure I could call on a few favors to get you some expert medical attention. We can get a sample of your blood, run a few tests-"

The gunman grimaced at the word. The last thing he wanted was to be surrounded by doctors treating him like a culture of cells and not the human being he was, trapped inside this body. Of course, how could he ever view this path positively? He was biased, with good reason. But Reeve was only trying to help. The man realized his words maybe a minute after he'd said them and sat back as if to distance himself in apology.

"Ahem. You know what I mean."

Vincent grumbled his acknowledgment. He supposed there was no way around this. He had to give it a shot, if nothing else was a viable option at the moment.

"Take your blood and your tests. Then I have someplace to go. Let me know when your people are done."

Reeve smiled warmly, pulling from his pocket a flip phone. "I'll call ahead, to expedite preparations. There's a clinic on the other side of town. It may be a little crowded, but I'm certain we can squeeze you in."

* * *

Vincent wasted no time on the way to his next destination.

If Yatsui was still following him around like a sentient umbra, then the best he could do was move as fast as possible, leaving him little chance to keep up or even get a head start—but the Planet forbid he pull his little teleportation trick again, just as he'd done to get ahead in Cosmo Canyon and Midgar. He'd booked a flight with Cid to North Corel, plotted a course through the mountains, one less traveled but just as manageable as the rest. From Corel, Vincent would then rent an ATV, double up on a few choice materia, supplies, and set out for the rocky back roads.

He maintained a wary vigil over his shoulder. That Yatsui was a tricky one. He wondered if, like all the other monsters, he was only attracted to Vincent because of his 'smell?' This would only solidify the fact that he, too, came from the same ilk as the bats, the Stingers, the Behemoths, the Eaters, all of them. Yatsui had only been dealt the lot of a human face. A fortunate lot, to coerce those into a false sense of sympathy, security and the like. And strike. It would have also meant that that was how he tracked Vincent everywhere.

It all became so clear.

The mountain evening here was laden with shadows, and within those shadows stalked those even darker, more animated. Hunters. But they never came down from their perches, tried as they might. Whatever manufactured materia lacked in strength it made up for in number. Vincent might as well have been an absolute shadow himself.

Morning rose, the shadows receded, things no longer crept by, hungry and waiting. Only a few hours remained until the gunman reached the end of his journey through the Nibel Mountains.

* * *

That fresh air always took his breath away. As did the view. But he never understood why she chose this place to squirrel away eternity if she wasn't going to spend it watching the horizon, the sparkling, misty waters, and all the phases of the sun and moon swinging overhead?

Right. Self-punishment.

When he thought about it, they'd all been in the same boat together. Him, Lucrecia. Yatsui. They built and lay in it, prepared to tread an endless, lonely river.

Though Vincent had been lucky enough to receive a helping hand.

He exhaled longingly, turned from the ledge which granted a grand vista over the little valley where Lucrecia made her resting place. He knew that if he let himself, he'd stand there forever without a care in the world. Let the demons be forgotten, the monsters thirsting for his blood, all the world's crises waiting around a hidden corner. They could have all gone to hell. But he had some semblance of a life to get back to, once everything was straightened out—his head included.

He glimpsed the mouth of the cave on a niche below. Her solitary cradle so easy to miss, he had to wonder how Lucrecia ever found this grave herself to keep.

The lonesome shimmery lake, muted beneath a clear, blue sky. The telltale waterfall that veiled the little cavern from sight; thus did Vincent descend to the lush green ground that thrived on the never-ending flux and hovering spray. As he approached the flank of the towering cascade, Vincent blinked away the dew collecting on his lashes.

He entered, his steps measured and slow. The cave echoed back the roar of rushing water, but the further he went in, the quieter the air, with only the frequent dripping to accompany him. The air here was crisp and thick with moisture, but never stagnant in merit to the waterfall's merciless unrest. The walls and floor deeper within were crystalline like ice, but only half as cool. Phosphorescent clusters of fungi mottled tiny alcoves set deep into the rock, their filaments dancing on an errant breeze. And before Vincent was the very altar where he had last seen his beloved Lucrecia, crying tears into heartless oblivion, lamenting her son and sins to no one but the ever so privileged Jenova fused to her every fiber, sinew and cell.

Vincent approached the crystal altar and knelt down on one knee as though he gazed upon the tombstone of one long gone. Technically, he was doing just that, he admitted with guilty ease. This was Lucrecia's grave, where she gave up living after all she'd done.

"Lucrecia," Vincent uttered into his chest, a solemn oath.

He pressed his palm flat to the stone floor, his fingertips drinking up its coolness with an unwilling hunger. "Lucrecia, I've read some interesting things before coming here. These things are why I come to you now. I learned that… you had a hand in why I am today. The way my body is. And you knew my father; you worked with him, right? But why didn't you tell me?"

Vincent paused, listening.

She was done talking, wasn't she? Naturally.

"I wonder, between you and Hojo… Whose 'experiment' was whose? Was it you who forged the body? Or the demons? Which of yours is going sour? And how can I fix it?"

"Your 'fix' has arrived."

Vincent jumped up and spun around, drawing his gun in record time to find, to his expected dismay, Yatsui. He stood there against the wall, with his arms crossed as if he held a newborn child.

His gold discs for eyes shone far more obviously here than out in the day, or anywhere else for that matter. Yatsui's sad stare in the semi-darkness reflected a demon's who'd come to take its dues. Vincent sighed defeatedly in spite of himself. Even as he took the best precautions to make certain he wasn't followed… Then again, the gunman supposed he was right, after all. The man was just another monster drawn to his blood, and of capabilities that ultimately made him inescapable. Nothing else made better sense in this situation.

"This cave," murmured Yatsui, his soft voice struggling over the waterfall's hiss. "Such sadness and pain and anger amalgamated into a single pulsing heart, bleeding out but never dying, eternal until time should end and collapse in on itself in a blaze of truest finality. It would dare consume all that wander unsuspectingly into its lair. It would infect and devour those so sensitive to its thrall. It baits you by forcing you to sympathize and clamps its jaws about your soul, your heart, and turns it gray with woe until… no more blood, no more life, to nurture the pain. And-"

"Dammit," Vincent swore under his breath. "Is no place sacred to you? Is no place safe?"

"So. This cave is sacred. Tell me why that is so."

"I don't have to tell you anything. But, confirm something for me. You're just as drawn to me as all the other things, aren't you? You're no different. You're one of them."

"A great shadow of pain and misery rests here," Yatsui said, as if he hadn't heard Vincent speak for all the venom his words held. "It should be of no surprise that I would have arrived here eventually. I can feel it…"

"Leave," the gunman commanded.

"Not until you see. Not until it is done, what I have come to do," Yatsui replied, bowing his head.

"Not a chance."

"Are you sure? Is there _nothing_ I can do to change your mind?"

"Nothing short of force. And even then? I'd like to see you try."

"Force? You mean fight?" Yatsui queried with a curious, childlike tilt of his head.

Vincent snorted.

"What if I fight you? For your pain? Although I think force is hardly necessary to acquire something so unwanted. But, if I must…"

"You're a real character."

The tall man raised his hand to stay anymore of Vincent's protest before he himself went to speak.

"Should you win, I will accept your wishes and leave you to wallow in your woes. And forever hereafter will the things with teeth and claws nip at your heels and those around you. I hope you are prepared to run for your life, should all your human conventions fail you. Ah but at least let me a chance to prove myself worthy. I can fight. I _will_ fight. What say you, Vincent Valentine?"

"What did I do to deserve this? Gaia… Is it just that time of the year?"


	11. Fury of the Occult Angel Part 1

_From Sixth: I can't remember what the hell that sword thing was inspired by. I'm going to assume anime. Maybe somebody else will recognize it._

* * *

_Blood Feast_

_Chapter 11: Fury of the Occult Angel Part 1_

Vincent and Yatsui stood against each other in grueling, absolute silence. Yatsui, the presiding master of listlessness, retained the perfect stillness of a statue he so demonstrated once before. The gunman bristled with disconcertion. The man went through motions like air, one moment a soft-spoken, slightly vibrant wraith, the next a fleshly statue with a gaze no less enticing than that of an Ahriman. He was still as death. The man had insinuated lacking a soul—yes, even when Vincent bemoaned listening to him prattle on about his nonsense, he'd paid enough attention, picked up on that comment and filed it away to glean its significance later. Now, it'd come back to him. Were soulless things ever truly alive? Could Yatsui have been undead? Was he anything at all? This nonexistence personified as he had alleged himself in the remnants of Aerith's church? Was this creature what was left when everything else—everything but remorse—was stripped away? He had to dismiss these thoughts. He didn't care about that, or he shouldn't have cared if he really did. That Yatsui preferred to remain a conundrum aggravated him. Now, he had to decide how to end this.

A request for a contest of strength, the stakes put forth, on either side an acceptance of suffering and defeat.

An urge came strong to slap himself in the face. Maybe this was just a bad dream from which he needed waking. But no dream lasted this long. Unless he was dead. Did that Yin-Yang, in reality, blow him to bits, along with all of Shinra Mansion, wiping yet another deplorable stain from the face of the Planet?

The gunman mulled over his state of affairs, meanwhile studying the effigy of questionable existence positioned just a few feet away. How would it end if Yatsui lost to him? That was more comforting to imagine than if he won, obviously. Yet there wasn't going to be any real victory here. Either Vincent would suffer losing a vital piece of his humanity or Yatsui would… What _would _happen to him?

Vincent drew his right shoulder back, in a pensive turn to Lucrecia's altar. _Are you watching, Lucrecia? I wonder what you'd make of this guy. If it was you he came to instead, would you have accepted him with open arms? Or turned him away so you can continue wallowing? No. You wouldn't have fought at all, I bet. You were at the end, nothing else to lose._

_But I… I still have a chance, don't I? Otherwise I wouldn't be walking around right now. I would have never woken up to help save the world from Sephiroth and ShinRa._

Vincent returned his gaze to the motionless Yatsui.

"Why don't we see what you can do?" Vincent uttered noncommittally. He saw Yatsui's eyes light up and widen at the other's affirmative challenge.

The pale man only bowed his head, replying with, "You honor me, Vincent Valentine. Now I can prove my mettle and strength to bear your suffering, and more."

"Be warned. I'm ready to win by any means necessary," his companion recited, gesturing his claw albeit limply against his hip. "That means no holding back on my end."

"I would not even think of having you withhold your strength. Use whatever you feel the need to. There are no holds… barred? To reiterate." Yatsui bowed his body forward as though recognizing a person of authority standing before him. "But I wonder if I should hold back, myself? In this form, my powers are less than limited, but…?"

"Change if you want. Doesn't matter to me. In fact, I'm curious of what you're capable," Vincent told him. He neglected to mention, however, the morbid curiosity in wondering whether or not he bled when struck. Would it run red, gray, or not at all? "Either way, I'm not going to lose." Yatsui had smirked considerately and brushed the hair from his cheeks with hardly a flit of his slender fingers.

"I see that you have kindled that flame within you, the flame of determination, the fires of competition. You may yet be a praiseworthy opponent, indeed," Yatsui voiced in clear fascination.

"Well. Can we get on with it?" Vincent asked, flexing his trigger finger.

"Yes, we can."

"Unarmed?" the gunman remarked, gesturing at Yatsui's empty hands.

"Ah. Yes, I need a weapon, of course. I am afraid I will have to go the way of the cliché."

Yatsui extended his left arm, open hand supine. Vincent winced imperceptibly when the other man's palm bulged up and out until the tip of a salt-white blade pierced the skin. Passing through the full length of his stiffened arm, the blade made its exit, dripping in seemingly liquefied flesh that evaporated before it ever touched the floor, like the hesitant pepper of quickly passing rain. At last did the end of the blade, a silver hilt with a guard molded into intricate little wisps like wings, eject from his palm where he was able to grip and wield it freely.

"Ah, my trusted foil and guardian, it has been quite some time," Yatsui whispered to his sword while tracing a finger along its trim four foot length. "Might this do? I promise to be careful. We are not fighting to the death, are we?"

"Debatable." Vincent turned Death Penalty over in the crook of his arm, checked his materia—before leaving Cloud in Kalm, he'd managed to get a few good pieces on loan, in case of emergency, so clearly this counted—and cocked and released the safety. Although he was not really one for hand to hand combat, should his gun fail clinching his side in battle, he wasn't going to hesitate over going toe-to-toe, and his claw was surprisingly sturdy enough that it could deflect small caliber edges and bullets before it cracked under pressure.

"Good enough?" uttered Yatsui in a curiously soft voice, lowering his sword towards the floor. He shrugged and sighed, wiping the grave expression from his radiant visage and grinned invisibly at Vincent. "Well, let us begin."

"Correction: Let us end this."

"If that is the way you see it."

In a sudden blur of black and red and gold, Yatsui glided forward, sword raised over his shoulder, initiating the fight with a single fluid swing at the gunman. Vincent jerked back, his cape flapping like a frantic red demon. He pulled on Death Penalty's trigger, releasing a materia-fused volley of blackened gravity. Yatsui bowed to the left, slicing at the dark spheres in a fanned motion, sending the energy out in a slow-moving arc, and lunged at Vincent once more. He leapt back again, surprised at the other's speed. Yatsui ducked in close, his blade flying through the air in a deeply sloping spiral, to which the other parried with his golden claw, forcing him back and launching yet another dark barrage. The pale man lifted his hand to the enticing, crackling globes, summoned forth a clear shield of will that deflected easily the other's attack, and called it back to nothingness.

"Ungh!" Yatsui's foil came down hard in the palm of Vincent's claw, so much that tiny sparks ignited in the clash between metal. Yatsui applied a struggling pressure, though his opponent had an amazing upper hand. Their noses almost touched, golden eyes amazed and amused, scarlet eyes cold and determined.

"I might have underestimated you, Vincent Valentine," he told him.

"Hmph," the gunman grunted. He swiftly hooked a pointy boot behind Yatsui's knee and drove him back, forcing him to slip and fall. He propelled another shot of crackling darkness, but the other dodged it easily, his body yanked across the floor and floating to his feet. The sphere sluggishly bounced off the empty spot on the translucent crystal, then dissolved into fluttering wisps, then nothing.

Vincent charged Yatsui, stopping short and spinning into a roundhouse but ending the motion with an axe kick instead. He bent far backward into a one-handed flip, executing a sword thrust succeeding his escape. Vincent parried once more with his claw, dropping to the floor and sweeping at Yatsui's legs. He sprang up in reaction then to the side to evade the gunman's second leg sweep.

"Hope you're prepared for this," Vincent said, pulling the trigger farther home than before.

A blinding stellar flash exploded from the long barrel of Death Penalty. Surprised, Yatsui staggered as though dazed, and aware of this brief opening, Vincent sprinted at the befuddled man. But his opponent was still lucid even in his dizziness. He backed a step and then somersaulted over the other's head, reminiscent of a diving corkscrew, and landed just behind Vincent. The pale man rushed an arm around his neck and locked him in a hold.

"You are a clever one, Vincent Valentine. I commend you for your adept skill," Yatsui whispered in his captive's ear.

The gunman only snorted in retort.

"Yes, you are very much a worthy opponent," he urged. "Beyond this gun of yours, I genuinely worry for my safety."

Vincent lowed in annoyance. So it wasn't the gun that he was worried about?

He quickly bent himself into a roll, dumping Yatsui on his knees, ending with what nearly sounded like an audible crack of something solid. In all his dexterity, Vincent snaked his claw around the pale man's neck and enforced his grip twofold with the other hand.

"You're toying with me," Vincent asserted, "aren't you?"

"I haven't the slightest idea what you could mean—"

"You're lying."

Yatsui huffed, squirming in his restraint. "I do not lie. I am only being careful. I know that something dark, too dark, rests within you. How would this play out were it to awaken?" Yatsui questioned, resting his hand against the cold surface of Vincent's claw held so firmly under his chin and against his throat. "I worry."

"Then you should realize that this game you've been playing—chasing me around like a sick puppy, is it?— is ridiculous. You should walk away before someone gets hurt. I can't be held accountable if that someone is you. You brought this on yourself."

Yatsui's head lolled forward as if he were falling asleep.

"Yes, I ask for it. It is what I want," he replied softly. "You have so much to gain and not much more to lose than your life. Your fate is more important than mine. All I can do is serve my sentence to eternity as a wayward thing, pondering my sins, mourning my beloved loss, and suffering in the stead of those who suffer. I bring this on myself. This is how I have chosen to live the rest of my days. My atonement remains incomplete. Never will it be complete until… So I must win, I must, I…" Yatsui's soft voice trailed off into silence. Vincent felt a strange force billow up from the man's restricted frame, a familiar force that he had experienced… where?

Midgar.

"Wait–"

Vincent flew clear across the crystalline cavern by that sheer force. He skidded along on his back until the pate of his head touched the carved, low steps of Lucrecia's altar. He swung his feet over his head and onto the ground, planted himself on his hands and knees with disbelief plastered on his respectively pale face as he watched Yatsui transform. The dull fog of his glowing otherworldly body pulsed and receded as he bent down to gingerly collect his sword at his stalk-like feet.

"You will not win. One way or the other, you will be liberated of your suffering."

"Starting to sound a little sinister there, eh?" Vincent asked. "Showing your true colors?"

"I shall go on as martyr. It is my only purpose until I am freed of this monotony which is the quick and I might rejoin with the Planet's lifeblood." His chiming voice reverberated in the gunman's ears. It was just like before, like listening through a tube, a tunnel. The distance between them deepened again, despite that they hadn't moved a foot. This wasn't a human he was dealing with.

"I wonder if you can hear yourself talk." Vincent rose to his feet, dusted off his knees.

"From time to time. You will be surprised how often I have said similar things in the past. Nowadays it may seem as if I speak on, what would you call it? Autopilot? Those whom had gladly relinquished themselves. Others whom had fought me, as you do now. But all of you, you are only human. Your species, it is so fragile. You can hardly bear what little pain you may incur. You cannot resist temptation. And you cannot resist power greater than you, though in numbers you may try and succeed but for a time. Hm, like insects, before that indifferent heel returns to crush you all in renewed force."

"Humans aren't as weak as you think," Vincent retorted.

"You may be correct, but I have yet to encounter one that could prove me otherwise of my conjecture… well, aside from the miraculous few that I had stumbled upon here or there," Yatsui admitted with a shrug of his single arm. "But they were too few, too far in between, above humanity in their own rights."

"Well, you can just add me to those miraculous few."

Vincent rushed forward, launching himself at the other in his altered state, claw first. Yatsui did not so much as flinch, only watching on with calm, not-quite-there eyes in that foggy, salt white face. Vincent, not daunted in the slightest, raged with all his might. His armored knuckles struck Yatsui point blank just beneath the sternum.

He tipped back like a weathered tree under a ripping gale. But he wouldn't be toppled. His body rippled and flickered as result of the impact but fast recovered. The fog that swaddled his narrow form distended like a gaseous balloon and locked Vincent in place, threatening to choke the energy out of him.

"That is…?" the voice whispered haltingly.

The fog shrank back as quickly as it had rolled in, letting Vincent free from his momentary suspension.

"Is it…? The chaos?"

* * *

_From Sixth (so long ago): Oh, so tired, sorry if this chapter crap too. How do people get ulcers? Anyway…_

_ShiAne, if you see this, I was wondering…what did you think Yatsui was before you read chapter 8? I'm really curious as to your presumption cuz, I dunno…I like to hear what people think. Anyway, I dunno what I was thinking when I split this chapter in two. And the end? That just popped into my head. Not really, I was sorta planning for Chaos to fully appear sooner or later. So…_

_You'll have to wait until next chapter to see how things end. I hope it's good. And Neko-Yami, Yuffie's cool, it's just I don't know what to do with her. That fly in the eye came right off the top of my head. But now I have plans to star her in her own adventure sooner or later. Yes, Princess Yuffie meets a new unlikely friend or something or other…_


	12. Fury of the Occult Angel Part 2

_Blood Feast_

_Chapter 12: Fury of the Occult Angel Part 2_

Vincent drew far away from Yatsui's glowing, hazy form.

"What did you do…? Some sort of… chain reaction?"

The luminous creature scrutinized Vincent from a distance. He shrugged when no easy conclusion could be drawn.

"It is that dark chaotic thing, which I had witnessed in the north. That is the culprit—no, there are several but this one is the crowning perpetrator," Yatsui pointed out so matter-of-factly. One fulgurant step did he take towards Vincent and continue on in his tinny, ethereal voice. "Let it out. Is it not the one with a mind and will very much like our own? If not, beyond? Something, perhaps, on… my level."

"You would like that, wouldn't you," the gunman mocked in a low voice. Chaos throbbed in his veins, skittered and twisted for freedom which incited fire and barbed wire to pervade his every limb. Its unrest rang in his ears like the rattling of chains, the angry whispers of malevolent ghosts. A banshee cackle of anticipation. "Well, he's… not coming out today. I'll make sure of that."

"Can you not control it?"

"If I didn't, then I wouldn't be–"

"Then why your reservations?"

"You want to see its true power? Right, you have a death wish." Vincent smirked bitterly at Yatsui behind the rim of his collar then turned away from him. "You just might be surprised."

"I beg to be surprised. Surprise me. Please."

"Suit yourself, but maybe now you'll see what you're really up against. But I'm not going to risk destroying this place. Outside," Vincent said, clutching his claw tight to his stomach, where a particular knot of flame and wire made its stubborn home. Chaos raked at his sides, pulled on his intestines, anything to annoy and distract the gunman, to drop his concentration. Opposite him, the gray figure nodded his head and swiveled about.

"Why, of course. We mustn't sully the sanctity of this, your sacred place."

"Shut up."

* * *

Calling out Chaos was usually an arduous task. Vincent had to suffer enough distress, duress or abuse that riled the demon's bloodlust, to make it rise fully to the surface. The same was said for those even without demons, to break their limits and unlock their real potential. But whatever electric moment transpired between him and Yatsui seemed to do the trick in half the time and half the beating, because Chaos's awakening was rearing its head full force and the arm to his gut was all he could do to keep the thing from spilling out right then and there.

Upon leaving Lucrecia's inner sanctuary, out to the little crescent of land that hugged the surrounding mountains and quiet lake, Vincent watched the skies above. He inhaled, exhaled, trying to gather composure before he let the monster loose. There was no room for lack of focus. He could never take Chaos lightly; any stagger in thought promised a perilous scrabble back to humanity.

Meanwhile, the hazy creature stood nearby, a quiet spectator as nearly always.

"Alright," Vincent muttered, his sigh burdened. "You want to see Chaos? You'll get your Chaos…

"Argh!" He doubled over as the burning wires burst from his veins. In turn, a noxious, black vapor ignited from those wires, starting with the soles of his feet, roiling in great puffs that beat furiously at his hair and cape. The vapor pushed heavenward, engulfing his form in its oily blackness, swirling and billowing like some amorphous terror from the depths of space. Yatsui stared on with undivided awe. He could most assuredly feel the power emanating from that dark cloud.

A rumbling and resonant growl sounded from the ravenous air.

A pair of gigantic black webbed wings spiked from the cloud in a blur, reaching towards the sky as if to bring down the sun within their leathery folds. They were exactly as Yatsui remembered in the City of the Ancients. So majestic, so abysmal. Then, like vacuous voids, they prompted the vapor to disperse with several lazy flaps, unveiling the beast he had been so eager to face.

Chaos let out a breathy bellow. Its massive bulk attracted darkness where darkness did not gather at will and its claws dripped stagnant, smoky ink. He glimpsed the narrow yellow eyes set like beads sunken into its skull, the jawful of double-edged fangs drawn in a perpetually sadistic snarl. He noted the grand horns jutting back over the head and the long pointed ears, typical of demons or devils, and just as well the horns that curled over its bristling shoulders.

"So… you are Chaos, in the flesh. The thing that threatens to consume Vincent whole, the beast," uttered Yatsui. The monster rose to its full height, flexing its limbs and wings then drawing them in as to embrace itself in rising from slumber. It quieted down, only its heavy breathing ever-present as it watched the other with patience befitting a judge of life and death. "Hmm… I wonder if I had made a mistake. But, it is too late now. What is done is done. Still I must fight…"

Yatsui slouched at first in the face of his opponent. Then, he gripped his sword harder, brought it up to point head on at Chaos.

"I feel as though I recognize you," he whispered. "You are a part of the earth in ways I could never compare. You are something natural, I might conjecture. A power of the end? Perhaps you are, or perhaps merely a branch of that power. It has been so long, shamefully, I have forgotten. But all that matters is now…"

Yatsui sprang at the devil Chaos, his sword ready. The beast reacted by raising a claw to catch the blade in its palm. The man quickly retreated for another attack, to which the large winged beast anticipated and launched itself forward like a blaze of ebony fire. It swiped repeatedly at Yatsui; he parried the iron-like claws and flipped back to put distance between he and Chaos to wrench an opening for another attack. But the demon did not relent in its violent onslaught. Subsequent to one such backflip, Yatsui landed on one foot and catapulted his misty body over the beast's head. Chaos swung its top half about, its arms flying at lightning speed. The hazy man brought his sword over his right shoulder to block, but even then the demon's force was overwhelming.

Yatsui retreated, spinning the hilt of his sword into a more skillful grip. The demon flew at him again; he used his foil to fly into the air and had thrust his foot between its shoulder blades. Chaos stumbled forward then wheeled in his direction and hissed like a steaming pipe. It drove a fist into the air, bringing forth geysers of black flame from the ground beneath Yatsui's feet. These fonts of darkling fire he dodged with ease and snuffed them with his quickened blade.

"I think it is safe to use other powers against you," the man murmured. "You are not like the man you possess; you would dance in my blood." He took flight on his sole gray wing, fingers thrust down at the demon. They crackled with electricity, whereupon he sprayed the ground below in tapering white rays. Chaos carved its black wings upward, like dark sabers, at the raging rain of light, thwarting them utterly, and took to the sky as well. Once more it clawed at Yatsui in fast repeated swipes. He evaded the shining black talons of the demon.

Save a single dark nick, running the length of his left cheek. And his shoulder, and his neck.

He drifted sideways, dumbstruck. Divided by these tiny injuries, Chaos, with both fists locked, sent him plunging back down to earth. The gray creature collided with the ground in a resounding thud that spanned all directions for miles.

Yatsui lay dazed in a grassy crater, but less than broken by his fall. Still, if he had an upper hand, it'd long slipped by now. No, the upper hand came screaming from above, clashing with the other in an explosion of dust and sound upon impact. As it subsided, Yatsui and Chaos engaged in a game of mercy, with the demon astride him, hand and claws interlocked, trembling under each other's force.

"You are, no, you _must_ be one of Gaia's many tools of destruction," Yatsui whispered, his voice wavering ever so slightly beneath the strain. He barked out a knowing gasp, as if something had struck him, and it wasn't the thing bearing down upon him just now. "I jumped into this before realizing who my true adversary would be. I had assumed only a weak-willed human. But I cannot go back on my word. I have to see this through, even if I should…" The demon snarled and gripped the other's hand tighter, drawing what could only have been blood from Yatsui's knuckles, white thought it was. It flowed freely, mixing with the tepid ink that issued from Chaos's claws, casting a pale pink upon the muted glow of his otherworldly body. He winced, the sensation of needles trailing up his arm. Still he persevered. "No one, no _thing_, has ever made me bleed in such a long time. It should not even be possible. … Gah!"

Chaos plunged its other idling claws into Yatsui where the shoulder became wing. A very real, blinding pain blossomed out, spreading across his face and neck, flushing it with pale color. The fog that covered him ebbed, exposing white, soft human flesh.

"I had almost forgotten what physical pain feels like… But now I, I have felt enough to last me decades." Yatsui was losing the game of mercy, the bloodletting that Chaos's claws spurred weakening him bit by bit. The demon lifted a cloven hoof and wedged it deep against his groin, adding to the weight that tortured him steadily. "Why do you not speak? Your eyes scream the intelligence to do so… Do you mock me? Will you torment me knowing that I may fall here, never knowing the reason for your… cruelty?"

Chaos snorted and clenched its teeth.

"It is not the end," Yatsui persisted. "Vincent Valentine, even if I should fail to subdue you as I had failed to win you voluntarily, the outcome was still foreseen in my favor. You would have never known… My method of purification, it is an intersection of life forces, a crossroads. I have you where I want you. So, now, the time has come."

Chaos's eyes turned glassy, and it recoiled suddenly. The demon struggled to free itself from the fog building a new front over Yatsui's bared skin. A dull whiteness flecked the demon's inky black claws then slowly started to spread, inching up the arm lodged into the other's body.

He chuckled silently and let his head loll back on his neck.

The whiteness crept up the demon's arms, up its throat and down its hardened torso, even consuming the monstrous wings that did all but pummel Yatsui into nothing. Chaos's effort to break away diminished as, under the whiteness, its body stiffened, becoming helpless as an ill-fated fly entrapped in free-flowing tree sap. The demon could move no more and Yatsui proceeded to pull himself to the beast with his hand.

"Now, you will be free…" As though an old dusty sheet atop a neglected piece of furniture, he snatched and whipped the demon covering from Vincent, leaving behind a dumbfounded gunman, his claw still fingers deep in Yatsui.

With that, the hazy creature turned black and opaque, his wing curled up like a wilting flower, snapping off at the root. Overcome by a wild fit, he punched Vincent square in the gut, knocking him back a good yard or two while he writhed uncontrollably on the ground, clutching the stump where his wing used to be.

The wings of Chaos sprouted from his back, but unfinished, twisted gnarls of broken bone and tattered leather. They shrank down to throbbing tumors and thusly popped, like festering boils.

At last, Yatsui's skin returned to its original, naked salt-white flesh, followed instantly by his black-red-gold robes draping themselves over him. He gasped for air, crying black filth from his shining gold eyes.

Speechless, Vincent stood back farther, nursing his stomach where that sucker punch had caught him off-guard.

"The Chao…" Yatsui called, in a long strangled moan.

"What did you… do…?" Vincent queried.

He'd collapsed on his side, that noxious vapor rising from his balled up body in feathery flakes.

The gunman stared. He felt his left arm grow unusually heavy. He glanced down, trailing a few fingers along the length of his claw. He couldn't quite figure it out but it felt hollow as well as leaden. Vincent's breath caught itself in his throat when his nails hung on cracks in the metal. And the more he fumbled, the more he chanced upon. The claw had been damaged, but how? Shards came away with even the gentlest picking.

The shock hit the gunman more thoroughly when the entire gauntlet, along with the rest of his arm, fell from his side with a _chunk, _twitching at his foot like a trampled spider.


	13. Futures Uncertain

_From Sixth, really early: ShiAne: Don't tell me my descriptions were so blah they reminded you of bad 60's special effects? I don't know if I should take that as an insult or an…insult. That kinda makes me feel…sad. Unless you didn't mean anything by it, then that's okay. Or if you did, then I guess I should take it toward motivation to practice writing even more. Either way, hmm… Haha, movies._

_From another Sixth: I changed a lot, or rather I put another spin on things, starting with last chapter. Why did I feel like he had to lose an arm? Because oh, I don't know. So many people see the arm as just a glove you can remove when and wherever. But, well… shit… DoC. I need to check that out again real quick. Or whatever, it's done. And years from now I may refine this again._

_Thank you._

* * *

_**Blood Feast**_

_**Chapter 13: Futures Uncertain**_

The attendant blushed hotly at Vincent as he sat there in a state of undress. The gunman himself wasn't exactly happy about the turn that his affairs had taken.

He'd lost an arm.

Here he was now, cooped in an examination room in Kalm's tiny clinic, with this man-child fidgeting over the bandages wrapped around his stump and chest. As if things weren't awkward enough, this complete stranger had a grand time getting an eyeful of all his old scars, where flesh had been sliced away and re-grafted, numerous dashes lined his limbs at vital points from sutures long removed, a string here or there of single, double, and triple digits inked permanently into him.

Every time he had to expose himself like this, to doctors and all their hapless little lackeys, it was another nail in a coffin begging him back to another aggravated siesta. This sort of attention just wasn't for him.

"Ah, uh," the boy stammered, affixing staples to the bandages. "So, the docs may or may not have already told you, b-but their guess as to why your arm just fell off is some… some sorta weird case of muscular dystrophy. From the chunk we had to amputate, their biopsies surmised that… all components needed for the skin and muscles' basic functions were simply… removed, leaving a husk of dead cells. Literally, that piece was just a husk, dust. No traces of it ever having been a part of something living to begin with were present."

"Uh huh," Vincent said absentmindedly.

"But why the _dystrophy_ happened is, is anyone's guess. Well, you'd know, sir, because you were there, right?"

"Unfortunately."

"Care to talk about it? I'm all ears."

"No. Get on with it."

The boy looked dejected, but continued his work until every wrapping was secure. With a sullen nod, he'd discarded his latex gloves and moved to leave the room.

"Wait," Vincent called. "Do the doctors have the results to my other tests?"

"Oh?" The attendant stopped and puffed. "Uh, sure. They're waiting with Mr. Tuesti at the hotel."

"What about… him?"

"Him? Y'mean the… the other guy? He's in containment at the hotel, too. It's funny how he keeps turning black, though. It's… weird."

Once the boy took his leave, Vincent dressed in silence albeit with some effort. Though his claw had been unwieldy, it offered up more support than a stump, a lot more. Now there was nothing. Gripping the air where he expected a limb confused him, irked him. Until he got a replacement, the gunman would have to wean himself on the fact that he was down one arm. And who knew what else.

What happened?

* * *

Twice, he'd forgotten. Except for a dull throb, he felt nothing that indicated he was missing a limb. There was no pain. The weight of it still hung at his side. But he knew it was just a phantom. So, all the way to the hotel, Vincent maintained a sour face. How long would it take to get used to this? To grasp nothing, to reach at nothing.

Reeve met with Vincent on the porch whom had a phone pressed to his ear. He murmured in soft tones before dismissing the person on the other line and slipping the device into a pocket, forgotten. The former ShinRa executive waved him nearer as he grabbed the front doors. "So, how did it go? Wouldn't you rather rest first? Your surgery was only yesterday."

"I'm fine," Vincent said. "They told me the reports were ready."

"Yes… They're in my office."

"And him?"

"He's been situated in the parlor. We'll get to him in a moment."

Reeve led his companion to the back office and seated him. Vincent had made an attempt to cross his arms before he caught what he was doing. Hesitantly, he tucked his stump back into the folds of his cape. "So, what do you have for me?"

"Well, at one point things began to get a little complicated, as I had to fly in a couple of specialists. Your blood tests more or less accurately reflected previous documentation. The chimeric constitution of your cells, Jenova acting as the bonding agent, and so on.

"One specialist ran a series of simulations on your blood and cellular makeup and the other drew up your spiritual mapping. The additional blood tests concluded that the bonding caused by Jenova's cells, and the cells themselves, was indeed entering a state of decomposition—the reason for the 'smell', as others have put it—which would have likely caused your entire cellular structure to split."

Vincent grunted. "That basically means… my body would have come apart at the seams?"

"Basically. After that happened, if given the chance? If not outright death, I shudder to think."

"What about this 'spiritual mapping' thing?" he asked.

After a good bit of pacing, Reeve placed himself behind the desk. He leaned forward in that large, leather-backed chair, his chin resting on his hands. Following a deep breath, he started, "It is a… somewhat obscure method originally developed in Cosmo Canyon some decades back. You recall those shady machines present during your first trip to the clinic? They calculate the approximate, ah… How did they explain it? The approximate frequency, length, resonance, whatever comprises the Lifestream used to make you… you."

"And?"

"Your map was a horror film in waves," Reeve answered, chuckling. "In all seriousness, amongst the most important details, your map was nearly pitch-black, devoid of a frequency, and had little resonance. It was stagnant."

"Chaos."

"A plausible deduction."

The gunman sighed and pinched at the bridge of his nose. All this technical gibberish, while not far from his understanding, seemed like too much needless fluff in expounding his situation. He looked over at Reeve and glared. "So… where does this all leave me? Have you taken another test or… mapping? Things have been a bit fuzzy the past few days."

"Blood test, yes. The mapping procedure is a little sophisticated so we'll forgo that, for now."

"Verdict, please," Vincent pressed, having grown impatient.

"You might not feel it now but every cell in your body has grown restless. I simply can't explain the rest. So, the verdict? Mostly inconclusive. I think we need more time to further ascertain your condition, see where everything goes from there."

Vincent exhaled and got to his feet. "Meanwhile, I could turn to mush or worse any day now."

_Or could I, _he thought.

"Some optimism might help things along."

"I'm going to go check up on him" was all he'd said before waving Reeve off and stalking out the office towards the parlor down the hall. The gunman had encountered the dining room first, where a family of three sat, fussing over bread and broth at the table. They hushed at the sight of the tall dark gunman, but a simple acknowledging nod dispelled their apprehension. He glided towards the parlor doors in the rear that were drawn closed with a "Do Not Disturb" sign dangling from a handle, accompanied by a note scribbled at the bottom discouraging all but authorized personnel.

He tapped on the door then tried the handle. Luckily, it wasn't locked, so he slipped inside thusly. Vincent grimaced from where he stood.

Yatsui was bound to a gurney tilted up at a slight angle. Like Vincent, he'd also been undressed at one time to be examined, but at least someone had the decency to put his pants and waistcoat back on while the rest was neatly folded and placed on a chair next to him. His face, at a glance, was a mask of something unidentifiable. The man's eyes were glued open from the tar oozing out of their ducts, the sclera stained, clouded over with black. His cheeks were both streaked and threaded with the stuff, as well. It stunk, probably much like Vincent did to monsters. He looked a mess, a stark contrast to the sterile purpose he usually sported.

Yatsui's voice cracked suddenly from his dirty mouth, "You… have arrived."

"You look foul."

He gaped.

"So, this is what you wanted?" Vincent scoffed. "You leave me maimed and possibly on the verge of dissipation long before my time. And here you are. A sorry sight."

"It will pass," he susurrated. "It will always pass. But…"

The gunman's eyes drifted to Yatsui's bare chest, hands, and feet. Threads of black pulsed faintly there, spreading out in thick branches then just as quickly shrinking. Was something at war within him? Had he really taken Chaos or Jenova, both or whichever, unto himself? Were they fighting for dominance in their new host? Vincent gripped his shoulder, glowering far harder that he should have been at the moment. But it wasn't as if Yatsui's eyes heeded him. No, they kept boring holes into the edge of the ceiling, unblinking, unmoving.

"But..."

"You're an asshole."

"I had bitten off… more than I could chew. This thing is… oh so strong…"

Hey," Vincent snapped. "Why don't you explain yourself? What's going to happen to me?"

"You are free," said Yatsui, as if those three words were all it took for perfect peace of mind. "Let, let your body adjust… as mine will."

"Bullshit, I lost my arm."

The pale man gaped again and a long croak streamed out. Discomfited by the noise, Vincent twisted in the opposite direction, thumbing his chin in tart deliberation. He wondered if Yatsui's 'purifications' had always ended up this way. If that was the case, he pitied him. He asked for this every time, the end result leaving him a gross heap scratching feebly for coherence.

"I just… wanted to see you one more time, Vincent Valentine. You are, you are a survivor. Just give it time…"

"I feel shortchanged here. I _was_ shortchanged. Robbed. By you. My body. I don't care about Chaos or the others. Or… could it have been the pound of flesh I've owed since this entire thing started with me joining ShinRa?" He hated reflecting on these things trying to distract him from Yatsui, the bastard. How could he feel saved? Despite the reduced function of that arm, he was prepared to keep all that its existence entailed, his entire body intact with all its distorted patchwork and deadly caveats. Wasn't he? He was ready for forever in the body of a monster. Right? But now…

"That look," he wheezed, though his eyes hadn't budged even a millimeter. "For now, you see… injustice. Later, it will be your breath anew. Fresh, sweet, tenfold deserved."

Vincent's lips flattened into a thin line on his face.

"What have I more to say? I suspect… not much more. So I should take my leave."

The gunman turned back. "Strapped down like that?"

"I could have… vanished at any time," he told him, darting his tongue over his tarred lips. "I wanted only to see you once more. With that fulfilled… I bid you adieu. If we see each other again, it will be too soon, much too soon…"

Vincent blinked suspiciously. The gurney emptied in an instant, with the rattle of buckled restraints. Yatsui's body had gone up in thin air, his robes and shoes, too. The only trace that stayed was the human shaped stain on the white sheets covering the gurney. The gunman bristled, slamming his fist on the wall behind him. "Damn it," he'd muttered. He was hoping the man would have been brought to justice for doing what he did. But if he really took Chaos and the other monsters with him, then… That was probably going to be punishment enough, wasn't it? Vincent himself didn't fall into perfect harmony with the beasts Hojo—and Lucrecia?— had first transplanted into him. He had suffered an untold number of hells just to be able to rein them in long enough so that he could put himself to sleep, crushing potential rampages before they even started. He went through too many changes just to keep his sense of self, his own thoughts and feelings, from being drowned out by the fiendish dissonance rooted in the back of his skull. He sacrificed basic human privileges just to continue on without causing any pain beyond what was necessary.

Yatsui had all of that to deal with now. Alone. Of course, he wasn't human. So, would he have been right to take over? Birds of a feather tended to flock together, after all, as the nonhuman things they were. But what would he and Chaos do together? Him and Jenova? Vincent hoped that this ordeal wouldn't give birth to another world crisis. But the notion was just too tempting.

Vincent pulled a chair against the wall and slid his body into it. He slipped his fingers up under the band around his head then yanked it off, causing his hair to fall more freely over his cheeks.

"What the hell do I do now?" he sighed, leaning forward on his knee. His eyes roved across the plush, patterned carpet beneath his heels.

If this was the end of it, would he do what he planned all along?

Could he take the next step, even if he was a little handicapped?

"What else is there, but to live?"


End file.
